Himalayas: The Richard R. & Magdalena Ernst Collection of Important Tibetan Paintings and other Himalayan Works of Art

Himalayas: The Richard R. & Magdalena Ernst Collection of Important Tibetan Paintings and other Himalayan Works of Art

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 23. A finely drawn thangka depicting Bhaishajyaguru, West Tibet, 15th century | 西藏西 十五世紀 藥師佛唐卡 設色布本.

Property from the collection of Richard R. and Magdalena Ernst | 恩斯特伉儷收藏

A finely drawn thangka depicting Bhaishajyaguru, West Tibet, 15th century | 西藏西 十五世紀 藥師佛唐卡 設色布本

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Lot Closed

December 15, 11:23 AM GMT

Estimate

8,000 - 12,000 EUR

Lot Details

Description

Property from the collection of Richard R. and Magdalena Ernst

A finely drawn thangka depicting Bhaishajyaguru

West Tibet, 15th century


distemper on cloth, the blue Healing Buddha wearing a patchwork monk’s robe, holding a golden myrobalan fruit in his right hand and a begging bowl in the left, seated in vajraparyankasana on a pedestal with lions in niches and draped with a cloth depicting Ushnishavijaya, the shrine-form throne back with a parasol at the apex and attendant bodhisattvas Suryavairocana and Chandravairocana standing at either side, and surrounded by Buddhas, deities, hierarchs and adepts, and a consecration ceremony below with donors and a large altar table laden with offerings

79 x 58 cm, 31 1/8 by 22 7/8 in.

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Collection Richard R. et Magdalena Ernst

Tangka représentant Bhaishajyaguru, détrempe sur toile, Tibet de l'Est, XVe siècle

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恩斯特伉儷收藏

西藏西 十五世紀 藥師佛唐卡 設色布本

The composition and technique of this finely drawn thangka is inseparably linked to Western Tibetan regions, and in particular the Kingdom of Guge where this renaissance style was developed in the fifteenth century, cf. a closely related painting of Bhaishajyaguru in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art with similar composition, consecration scene, and design of the throne draped with a cloth depicting Ushnishavijaya, see Pratapaditya Pal, Art of Tibet, Los Angeles, 1983, pp. 142-43, cat. P8, pl. 13. Like the Los Angeles example, this thangka features both Gelukpa and Sakyapa hierarchs, an iconographic trend seemingly peculiar to Western Tibetan painting: here Tsongkhapa and possibly Sakya Pandita are depicted either side of the Buddha’s halo. The Los Angeles painting has Tsongkhapa and the Sakya master Kunga Nyingpo at either side of the composition. Rob Linrothe has compared the style of the Los Angeles example with murals at the White Temple at Tsaparang with a rough date of before 1541, see Rob Linrothe, Collecting Paradise: Buddhist Art of Kashmir and its Legacies, New York, 2014, p. 167.