AN IMPERIAL SILK KESI OF A DAKINI QING DYNASTY, YONGZHENG/ QIANLONG PERIOD

intricately woven in multi-coloured silk and gold against a white satin ground, depicting a dakini dancing on a lotus base, set against a flaming mandorla, wreathed by scrolling foliage

For another closely related woven silk image of a dakini, similarly woven in multi-coloured silk and gold against a white satin ground, see a longer panel enclosing three figures in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, illustrated in Robert D. Jacobsen, Imperial Silks: Ch'ing Dynasty Textiles in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, 2000, no. 536. The authors note that the Minneapolis hanging, originally from the William E. Colby collection and first exhibited at the Nelson Gallery of Art in 1954, 'reportedly formed a frieze decorating the upper wall of a Lamaist temple in Peking'. Both the Minneapolis and the current example exhibit the same opulence of brocade work and skill in which the panels depict the figures, revealing the wealth of Imperial patronage for such temples in which they were housed in the 18th century.

The decorative style, with the distinct colour scheme, generous spacing and Central Asia-style motifs, derives from those of the Tanguts, the successors to the Uighurs in Central Asia in the eleventh century, who acted as a conduit between China and Tibet. An example of this prototype in style is the large silk kesi banner of Green Tara, found at Kharakhoto and now in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, illustrated by Valerie Reynolds, ‘Luxury Textiles in Tibet’, in Jane Casey Singer & Philip Denwood, eds., Tibetan Art: Towards a Definition of Style, London, 1997, p. 124, pl. 111.  

The figure depicted is a female wisdom dakini. For a thangka depicting the wisdom dakini as an emanation of the White Yogini from the lineage of Machik Labdon (1055-1153), the great female mystic from the Lab region of Tibet, see Jeff Watt and Tenzin Dharlo, Female Buddhas, Women of Enlightenment in Himalayan Art, New York, 2005,  p.158. The iconography, posture and rendition of the features on the thangka matches closely that on the current kesi.