Provenance:
Collection of Richard R. and Magdalena Ernst
Published:
David Jackson, A History of Tibetan Painting, Wien, 1996, p. 187, pl. 27
The blue, buffalo-headed Yamantaka is ithyphallic and without consort in his Ekavira Vajrabhairava manifestation, with nine faces, sixteen legs, and thirty-four arms, and holding a flayed elephant skin cape at his back and a panoply of ritual implements.
He is adorned with human skulls and bone jewelry, snakes, and a garland of severed heads, and he stands in pratyalidha trampling naked humans, fierce animals, and angry birds, with Brahmanical deities lying prone on a lotus pedestal resting on mountainous landscape and an aureole of flames behind representing pristine awareness.
Vajradhara above is flanked by Yama and Nairatmya, multi-armed forms of Krishna Yamari astride buffalo, and a lineage of Indian adepts and Tibetan Sakya-order hierarchs. Mounted Brahmanical dikpala guardians appear below, including Indra on his elephant to the right, four-armed Agni on a ram beneath, Ishana on a black bull, blue Yama holding a skull staff and riding a buffalo, Bhudevi on her black sow, blue Nirrti on a naked dark-skinned zombie, Brahma on a goose, Varuna holding the serpent, Vayu on a gazelle, and Yaksha on a horse.
David Jackson has identified the final teacher depicted in the Sakya lineage surrounding Vajrabhairava as the 13th abbot of Ngor monastery, Drangti Panchen Namkha Pelzang (1535—1602),[1] thus suggesting a Ngor-monastery provenance for the painting and a date of around 1600. The red-painted border with gold floral design is typical of Sakya-order thangkas from this period, such as a circa-1600 Kurukulla in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.[2]
[1] Jackson, op. cit.
[2] Pratapaditya Pal, Himalayas: An Aesthetic Adventure, Chicago, 2003, p. 259, pl. 171
