A thangka of Amitabha with myriad Buddhas, Central Tibet, 14th century | 藏中 十四世紀 阿彌陀佛及萬佛唐卡

David Tremayne Ltd., London, 30th June 1987.

David Tremayne Ltd.，倫敦，1987年6月30日

The painting depicts the Transcendental Buddha, Amitabha, red in color, adorned with golden gem-set jewelry, wearing a sash around the torso, a colorful striped dhoti and a diaphanous undergarment with a design of Buddhas within roundels. With hands folded in dhyana mudra and legs crossed in vajraparyankasana, the Buddha is seated on an eastern Indian-style throne, with a green scroll-patterned cushion behind, a triangular cross member supporting hamsa geese flanking his multicolored halo, and Garuda at the apex. Attendant bodhisattvas stand on either side of the throne, both orange in color, with hands in the teaching gesture, dharmachakra mudra, one with a white lotus at the shoulder and the other with a red lotus supporting a curved kartrika knife. Nine seated deities appear within the central shrine, including four above holding golden-stemmed flowers; blue Manjushri at the left and an obscured figure to the right; an offering goddess at either end of the throne base, one holding a conch shell and scarf and the other a butter-lamp; a seated deity in the center with a chain—perhaps Vajrasphota, guardian of the Western mandala gate—together with two pairs of entwined peacocks representing Amitabha's vahana. The background of the painting is filled with repeated images of Shakyamuni Buddha, a mounted Dikpala guardian at the left of the lower register next to Lokapala Virupaksha, Guardian of the West, and a second mounted Dikpala to the right corner.

A similar composition of myriad Buddhas is seen on a circa 1250-1300 central Tibetan thangka of Akshobhya Buddha that similarly depicts only one of the four Lokapala and two of the eight Dikpala guardians in the lower register, exhibited in Himalayas: An Aesthetic Adventure, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 2003. cat. no. 134. In this catalogue, Pratapaditya Pal suggests that the remaining six Dikpala and three Lokapala that are not depicted on the Akshobhya would appear on other thangkas in a set of five paintings representing a Vajradhatu mandala, ibid., p. 207. Indeed, Akshobhya's mandala position is East and the Lokapala depicted in the lower register, Dhritarashtra, is the Guardian of the East, while the present thangka of Amitabha, whose mandala position is West, depicts the Guardian of the West, Virupaksha. Pal further suggests that the central painting of the group of five, that of Vairochana, would not depict guardians: indeed, a late thirteenth or early fourteenth century central Tibetan 'Vairochana' thangka from a set of five, with similar myriad Buddha composition, contains no guardian deities, as shown in The Circle of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, 2003, cat. no. 131. The myriad Buddhas depicted on all these paintings likely represent the concept of the Thousand Buddhas of the Auspicious Aeon (see Pal, op. cit.).

The present Amitabha would thus have been one of the five paintings in an important set of thangkas representing a Vajradhatu mandala, a popular iconographic theme in early Tibetan art. The style of the thangka maintains the eastern Indian stylistic influence evident in central Tibetan paintings from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, in the design of the gem-set golden pendants suspended from the necklace; the green scrolling textile pattern of the throne cushion; the striped dhoti and the diaphanous undergarment with depictions of Jina Buddhas; and Amitabha's face expressing an otherworldly intensity reminiscent of medieval eastern Indian sculpture and painting. Compare a late thirteenth or early fourteenth century central Tibetan thangka of Amitabha painted in the eastern Indian manner, exhibited in Kossak and Casey Singer, Sacred Visions: Early Paintings from Central Tibet, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1999, cat. no. 28; and the miniature Buddha figures depicted on the diaphanous shawl of a circa 1200-1250 painting of Ratnasambhava, ibid., cat. no. 23.

The painting is notable for the sumptuous treatment of Amitabha's jewelry and throne back, featuring golden droplets and gem settings worked in relief with high viscosity paint, a skill elucidated by Rob Bruce-Gardner, 'Reflections on Technique in Early Central Tibetan Painting' in ibid., p. 202.