Page 136 - Bonhams IMages of Devotion, Hong Kong Nov 30 2022

1058
A GROUP OF THIRTY-FOUR NYINGMA INITIATION For a set of cards with multiple deities on each, see Lauf, Eine
CARDS (TSAKALI) Ikonographie des tibetischen Buddhismus, Graz, 1979, pp. 166-72,
EASTERN TIBET, CIRCA 18TH CENTURY nos. 74-7. For a similar assembly of wrathful deities found on the North
Distemper on cloth. Wall of the Lukhang chapel in Lhasa photographed by Thomas Laird,
Himalayan Art Resources item no. 4746 see Luczanits, ‘Locating the Great Perfection’, in Orientations, Vol. 42,
Set of 25: 7.5 x 6.8 cm (2 7/8 x 2 3/4 in.), each; no. 2, March 2011, p. 111, fig. 9.
Set of 9: 12 x 9 cm (4 3/4 x 3 1/2 in.), each
Provenance
HKD50,000 - 70,000 Private California Collection, acquired in Hong Kong in the 1980s

藏東 約十八世紀 寧瑪派微型佛畫三十四幅

Originally bound within silk borders and likely joined as a part of a long
banner to decorate a meditation hall, the initiation cards depict various
wrathful deities, attributes, and some animal-headed deities primarily
from the Bardo and Guhyagarbha cycles of meditational deities. A
group of 25 show deities emerging from dense billowing clouds, and
another group of nine feature figures or single attributed suspended
on graduated backgrounds, both groups rendered in a Kham painting
style of Eastern Tibet. Inscriptions on the back of each card indicate
their initial function in tantric initiation rites.

134 | BONHAMS