Provenance:
Tamashige Collection, Japan
Sotheby's, New York, March 19, 2014, no. 118
Published:
The World of Mandala—Tamashige Tibet Collection, Okura Museum of Art exhibition catalogue, Tokyo, 2005, pp. 42-43, cat. no. 27
Jeff Watt, Himalayan Art Resources, item no. 31233
This monumental thangka depicts scenes from the life of the Tibetan Dharma King (Tib. chögyal) Tri Ralpachen (r. 815-838), depicted at center enthroned in a palace holding a golden jewel and dressed in traditional early-Tibetan regal attire, with crown, white turban, and boots. The king is bearded, which is Ralpachen’s common attribute when depicted in Tibetan thangkas and sets of sculptures of the Three Great Kings, Songsen Gampo (r. 617-650) Trisong Detsen (r. 755-804?), and Ralpachen.[1] Ralpachen is regarded as an emanation of Vajrapani, and the four-armed aspect of the deity—Vajrapani Bhutadamara—appears above center, the only Buddhist deity depicted on the thangka apart from the Four Guardian Kings standing within the central palace walls. Ralpachen’s palace grounds are filled with musicians and foreign dignitaries and officials offering jewels.
Celestial beings holding banners stand with the Four Guardians at either side of his throne. Auspicious emblems rain down from the sky above, and rays emanating from the king’s person connect with surrounding temples and narrative scenes. The thangka is one of the largest Tibetan panoramic historical narrative paintings on cloth; compare a rare monumental seventeenth- or eighteenth-century Tibetan horizontal composition depicting scenes from the life of Padmasambhava, now in a private collection.[2]
The Great King Ralpachen was the third of the three legendary imperial patrons of early Buddhism in Tibet, after Songtsen Gampo and Trisong Detsen. Ralpachen oversaw the considerable expansion of the Tibetan Empire during his reign, and the promotion of Buddhism in Tibet and throughout her domains of northern India, Central Asia, and China.
1 See Jeff Watt, HAR, item nos. 72040, 90104: Martin Brauen, Impressionen Aus Tibet, Pinguin-Verlag, 1974, p. 177: Sotheby’s, Paris,' Arts d’Asie,' December 11, 2020, no. 40
2 In Deborah Ashencaen, Gennady Leonov, Tadeusz Skorupski, Light of Compassion: Buddhist Art from Nepal and Tibet, Spink & Son Ltd exhibition catalogue, London, 1997, cat. no. 3
