Page 60 - Bonhams Image of Devotion Hong Kong December 2, 2021

1021
A THANGKA OF GREEN TARA
GYANTSE REGION, TIBET, EARLY 15TH CENTURY
Distemper on cloth; verso with ink inscriptions comprising ‘om, ah, hum’
incantations behind various figures and two central lines repeating the ‘ye dharma
hetu’ Buddhist creed twice; with later cloth mounts and dowel.
Himalayan Art Resources item no.16993
Image: 50.5 x 43 cm (19 7/8 x 17 in.);
With silks: 82 x 45 cm (32 1/2 x 17 3/4 in.)

HKD400,000 - 600,000
江孜 西藏 十五世紀初 綠度母唐卡

This painting is replete with deities and practices that promote longevity,
protection, and success for the practitioner. At the painting’s center, the
bodhisattva Green Tara has the miraculous power to deliver her devotees from
all forms of danger. ‘All forms’ are codified into eight prevalent forms of danger
(disease, invasion, banditry, wild animals, etc.), which Green Tara can be seen
saving tiny devotees from in the register immediately below her throne. As her
intervention naturally promotes a longer life, so the eight diminutive Taras are
split into two by a central figure of Amitayus, the Buddha of Longevity. Down
the sides of the painting are the Buddhas of the Ten Directions and the Eight
Medicine Buddhas whose presence emphasizes the auspicious buddha-presence
throughout the expansive Mahayana universe. The painting’s original donor is
seated before an altar at the bottom center of the painting, flanked by other
bodhisattvas and deities, such as Vajrapani, Jambhala, and Vasudhara, who in
their assemblage grant a holistic array of boons and protection.

The auspicious composition is rendered with stylistic features found in murals
in the town of Gyantse, Shigatse Province, painted between c.1370-c.1450.
These murals were created in a period known as the Golden Age of Gyantse, in
which the town became the political and cultural center of the Sakya school of
Tibetan Buddhism. Distinctive elements of the Gyantse style include the shape,
heavy black outline, and placement of the two green clouds over an indigo
background, as well as Tara’s dressy silks (also outlined in black), her crown
type, and the petals of her lotus pedestal. A Gyantse mural of Green Tara with
these characteristics is painted on the second floor of the Gyantse Kumbum, the
town’s crowning monument, painted 1427-36 (Laird, Murals of Tibet, TASCHEN,
2018, pp.325-31). However, in contrast to the Kumbum’s mural, representing
the Gyantse style in its maturity, the present painting has no landscape elements
(other than the two green clouds), nor does it frame its subsidiary figures within
floating roundels. Instead, the painting follows the more geometric format of earlier
Sakya painting from the 13th and 14th centuries (cf. Jackson, The Nepalese
Legacy in Tibetan Painting, New York, 2010, pp.67-79). This mix of consistent
and earlier features compared with the mature Gyantse style indicate an earlier
attribution to around the turn of the 15th century.

Provenance
Carlo Cristi, 2010
Private Australian Collection

58 | BONHAMS