Printed from Woolley & Wallis

Description

A TIBETAN THANGKA OF TSONGKHAPA AND THE REFUGE FIELD, TSHOGS ZHING
18TH CENTURY

With Tsongkhapa seated in the centre wearing a pandita hat, his right hand in vitarkamudra and holding an alms bowl in his left hand, surrounded by a hierarchical arrangement of Buddhas, bodhisattvas, protective deities and other figures, with the Panchen Lama Incarnation Lineage above, Buddha Vajradhara at the top and depictions of Mount Sumeru and the Four Continents and the Seven Jewels of Royal Power to the bottom left and right, with lines of Tibetan inscription below and further to the reverse, 77cm x 47cm.

Provenance: from an English private collection, with a copy of an invoice for Fine Antiquities Ethnographica, The Old Drury, 187 Drury Lane, London, dated 20th December 1986.

Cf. The Rubin Art Museum, accession no. F1997.41.7 (Himalayan Art Resources no. 571) for a related 18th century example. See also the Tibet House Museum, New Delhi, for an 18th century block print image with the same inscription to the bottom (Himalayan Art Resources no. 74089).

The Field of Accumulation or Refuge Field, tshogs zhing is a format of Buddhist painting that arranges all of the teachers and deities of a particular tradition in one single painted composition as formulated by individual religious liturgical texts and traditions. The theme of Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), founder of the Gelug order, surrounded by a hierarchy of the Buddhist pantheon is commonly found in Tibetan painting from the 18th century onwards. The circular design for this style of Refuge Field composition would have likely originated in the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery of Shigatse and would have been based on the artistic and iconographic tradition of Konchog Gyaltsen, student of Panchen Lama Lobsang Chokyi Gyaltsen.

十八世紀 宗喀巴大師皈依境唐卡
來源: 英國私人收藏, 附倫敦Fine Antiquities Ethnographica 1986年12月20日發票複印件。