Enrica Medugno
Senior Sale Coordinator
Lot 204
A painting depicting chakras in the subtle body Mandi, Punjab Hills, circa 1650-1700
23 May 2023, 11:00 BST
London, New Bond StreetSold for £8,960 inc. premium
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Oliver White
Head of Department
A painting depicting chakras in the subtle body
Mandi, Punjab Hills, circa 1650-1700
Mandi, Punjab Hills, circa 1650-1700
tempera on cloth, various nagari inscriptions on painted surface, orange border, laid down on an archival mount
97 x 43 cm.
97 x 43 cm.
Footnotes
Provenance
Formerly in the collection of Detlef Rosen, Dusseldorf, Germany.
'The subtle body is probably the most important subject of Tantra art. It illustrates the structure of the inner human body used in yogic Sadhana [...] it is the means by which his world is made real around him for every individual [...] it is the fundamental mechanism by which the individual can work on the reconciliation between what he may think of as spirit and as matter, as subject and object'.
For discussion of the 'subtle body' mechanism with its chakras, see Tantra, exhibition catalogue, Hayward Gallery, London 1971, pp. 72-75 (from which the passage quoted above comes), with illustrations on pp. 72-73, especially no. 364, a 17th Century example from Nepal, with a similar moustachioed figure. For a related Kangra painting of the late 18th Century, depicting a yogi (also with a moustache, seven chakras imposed on his body), see I. Rammos, Tantra: Enlightenment to Revolution, London 2020, pp. 72-72, fig. 41.