IMPORTANTE TANGKA REPRÉSENTANT LE MANDALA DE KALACHAKRA TIBET CENTRAL, MONASTÈRE DE NGOR, MILIEU DU XVE SIECLE |

Détrempe sur toileKalachakra aux multiples couleurs, à quatre visages et vingt-quatre bras en union avec sa parèdre Vishvamati à quatre visages et à huit bras au centre du Palais du mandala, entourés de huit divinités à huit bras se tenant debout dans des pétales de lotus, l’ensemble entouré de deux chambres carrées concentriques dans lesquelles sont assises des divinités aux multiples bras, en sus, deux autres chambres enserrent les précédentes, la première ornée de huit mandalas à neuf divinités et la seconde de douze mandalas à vingt-neuf divinités, des portes de palais étagées aux quatre points cardinaux, tous sur fond de volutes rouge, jaune, blanc et bleu, l’ensemble encadré par un anneau aux flammes polychromes peuplé de trois formes de Kalachakra, Vajrabhairava, lamas et divinités entourant le palais du mandala, la lignée de transmission du Kalachakra dans le registre supérieur, dix divinités courroucées du cycle du Kalachakra dans le registre inférieur accompagnées d’Ushnishavijaya, de Mahakala, d’Amoghapasha et de Jambhala, à l’extrémité droite, un donneur assis près d’instruments rituels et d’offrandes disposés sur des pampres de vigneHimalayan Art Resources item no. 8283.

Galerie Koller, Zurich, 26th and 27th November 1993, lot 1.

Himalayan Art Resources item no. 8283.

There is light overall wear and losses to the pigments, particularly along the right hand side of the painting and the upper left corner. There is some overall creasing with associated losses to the pigments. Minor areas of retouching and repainting. There is a tiny perforation to the centre of the central figure. The edges of the cloth are frayed. The colours are fresh and vibrant. Please note that this painting was acquired from Galerie Koller, Zurich, 26th and 27th November 1993, lot 1. Himalayan Art Resources item no. 8283.
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The mandala of Kalachakra (the Wheel of Time) is one of a set of Vajravali paintings commissioned in the Nepalese style for the Sakya monastery of Ngor in Tsang province, central Tibet. The traditional Sakya patronage of Newar artists from Nepal is well documented, see Steven M. Kossak and Jane Casey Singer, Sacred Visions: Early Paintings from Central Tibet, New York, 1998, pp. 40-5. The painting’s donor is depicted at the far right of the lower register where he is identified by inscription as Sonam Sangye, a disciple of Ngorchen Kunga Zangpo (1382-1456), the founder of Ngor monastery. For a biography of Sonam Sangye see Volker Caumanns, Shākya-mchog-ldan, Mahāpaṇḍita des Klosters gSer-mdog-can: Leben und Werk nach den tibetischen Quellen: Contributions to Tibetan studies 11 (Wiesbaden: Dr Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2015), 153 n. 51, 259. While Sonam Sangye’s exact dates are not known, his apprenticeship with Kunga Zangpo suggests his career at Ngor was well within the fifteenth century, thus confirming the date of the painting. Furthermore the style and format of the mandala is closely comparable to a fifteenth century Kalachakra in the Michael Henss Collection that was commissioned by Kunga Zangpo for Ngor sometime between ca. 1429, when he founded the monastery, and 1456, the year of his death, see Kossak & Casey Singer, op. cit., p. 168, pl. 47b. The Kalachakra tantra was devised in the eleventh or early twelfth century by Indian scholar Abhayakaragupta at the eastern Indian monastery of Vikramashila, and is one of the most complex in Vajrayana Buddhism — some seven hundred and twenty-two deities are described in the textual source — making for perhaps the most intricate and aesthetically appealing of all Tibetan mandala painting.