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Tibet or China 17th c. Distemper on cloth 37 x 28 cm. / 14 1/2 x 11 in. |
Detail: close up Vaisravana and his steed appear atop a lotus in the foreground of a twelve-pillared temple. The interior walls are plain, the floors covered with blue tiles, the ceiling supported by red pillars with green, delicately carved eaves. A monkey and a ram approach the deity, as a human male attendant and a dog take their leave to the viewer's left. On the temple's upper story, framed by pillars, are figures of Sakyamuni Buddha, Tibetan King Songtsen Gampo (r. c. 620-50), and a Gelukpa order hierarch. Behind this elegant structure are the red walls of a Chinese architectural compound. In the painting foreground are other members of Vaisravana's assembly, riding various mounts and in some cases assuming the gestures of dance. There is a wonderful sense of movement in these figures and their extravagant garments. Human remains, including skulls, an arm, a foot, a head, and thigh bones are scattered in this evocative landscape of blue and green, highlighted in gold. A tiger mauls a fresh human corpse amidst a landscape in which the foliage of trees is noted with a delicate and deftly handled brush. Clouds in subtle hues and rich, unexpected forms adorn the sky. A seventeenth century date can be posited by reference to other seventeenth century paintings. 66 Provenance: European private collection 65. See Gilles Beguin and Sylvie Colinart's study of a late fourteenth century Vaisravana painting in the Musee Guimet, "Vaisravana, Dieu des Richesses, Dieu des Armees: A Propos d'un Thang-ka du Mus‚e Guimet" Artibus Asiae LIV, 1/2 (June 1994): 137-55. For a painting with a very similar composition, see Auboyer and Beguin, Dieux et Demons de l'Himalaya, no. 223. 66. See a c. mid-seventeenth century Lama portrait in the Rubin Collections, published in Rhie and Thurman, Worlds of Transformation, pp 363-64; and another work in the same collection that portrays Demo Rinpoche and is dated 1667. The low pink lotus platform in Vaisravana's mounted entourage also appears in the offering sculptures that appear below Demo Rinpoche, see op cit., pp. 366-67. |
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