Footnotes

藏西 十四世紀 五上師噶舉法脈唐卡

The central quadrant of this intricate Tibetan painting commemorates five monastic leaders of the Kagyu order. Each is portrayed with his hands raised in the honorific iconographic gesture of 'Progressing the Dharma' (dharmachakrapravartana mudra), memorializing their contribution to promoting the wisdom and skillful means of Tibetan Buddhism. At the painting's very center is an image of Chakrasamvara, who represents a key body of tantric literature and practice with which to transform one's consciousness and realize one's innate Buddhahood. Below Chakrasamvara is Chaturbhaja Mahakala, the principal guardian of the Chakrasamvara Tantra. He sits above a pair of diminutive Black and Yellow Jambhalas under whose auspices a practitioner can receive the basic sustenance and welfare needed to keep them focused on spiritual pursuits. In the painting's surrounding registers are a host of bare-chested tantric mahasiddhas and cloaked monastic leaders representing several ancestral teacher-and-disciple lineages, including the Hevajra and Chakrasamvara lineages of the Kagyu tradition. Identified by inscription, Marpa Chokyi Lodro (1012-97), founder of the Kagyu school and a renowned translator of Buddhist scriptures, is depicted on the third row from the top, second from the left. He is surrounded by siddha Matangi on the left and Vajra Ghantapa above. Mahasiddha Virupa appears at the top right corner of the composition. The central masters are being commemorated as perpetuators of these ancestral chains.

The thangka is painted in a style produced in the 14th century in both Ngari, in West Tibet, and the southern central region of Tsang, which shares a border with Nepal. This geographical proximity, and the likely employment of Newari artists to paint this thangka, are noticeable stylistically from the robust figural types shown throughout the painting's registers, and the plucky representation of Chakrasamvara, whose benign sensibility betrays a Newari preference that contrasts with fiercer Tibetan representations (for more information, see Bonhams, New York, 23 September 2020, lot 629).

A thangka of Vajrasattva with Consort in the Zimmerman Family Collection provides an excellent stylistic reference, having been discovered by a Swiss explorer in 1936 in an abandoned cave monastery with 13th-/14th-century murals near Khyunglung in West Tibet (Jackson, The Nepalese Legacy in Tibetan Art, New York, 2010, pp.126-9). The Vajrasattva thangka renders the same robust figural type and shares other stylistic features with the present lot, such as its treatment of the Buddha images throughout its top register, the pointed throne-backs behind each diminutive figure, and the lotus petals of its central subject. It also employs the same type of indigo-blue background, with small flowers framing the central figure's rainbow mandorla. Also see a 13th-century group portrait of four lamas produced by the Drigung Kagyu order in the Michael and Beata McCormick Collection, published in Jackson, Painting Traditions of the Drigung Kagyu School, New York, 2015, p.94, fig.5.19A. The practice of applying gold roundels to the forehead and cheeks of a painting's central subject, as on the five lamas of the present thangka, is also demonstrated on a mural of Green Tara in West Tibet, located in the Guru Lhakhang, Phyang, Ladakh (Jackson, Painting Traditions of the Drigung Kagyu School, New York, 2015, p.102, fig.6.2).

Provenance
Carlo Cristi Arte Orientale Tessili, Italy, 2010
Private Australian Collection