Arhat Vanavasin, One of the Sixteen Great Arhats, from a Set of Twenty-Three
late 17th/early 18th century
- Medium
- Pigment and gold on silk and cotton
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 102 × 61.5 cm (40 1/8 × 24 1/4 in.)
- Culture
- Tibet
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of Asia
- Credit line
- Alsdorf Foundation, Margaret Gentles, Frederick and Nathalie Gookin, Samuel M. Nickerson, Russell Tyson funds; Ardith Lauerman endowment
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This thangka most likely depicts the Arhat Vanavasin. He is seated amidst mountains facing slightly right with a flywhisk in his left hand and his right making a pointing gesture, just as he is described in certain Tibetan liturgical verses. He is surrounded by lush green and blue foliage, and seated beneath a small floating image of White Tara above. Tara appears peaceful, seated on a lotus, with one face and two hands, and holds a lotus with her left hand while making the boon-granting gesture (varada mudra) with her right.
The Sixteen Arhats were legendary early Indian disciples of the Buddha Shakyamuni. Although they were not worshipped individually and emerged relatively late as an iconographic group, they became a popular subject in Buddhist art in both Tibet and East Asia. The complete group usually consists of twenty-five figures: the sixteen arhats, the Buddha Shakyamuni, his two attendants Shariputra and Maudgalyayana, the Chinese monk devotee Hvashang and the lay upasaka Dharmatala, and the Four Great King of the cardinal directions, Dhritarashtra, Virudhaka, Virupaksha, and Vaishravana.
There are strong Chinese influences evident in the style of this thangka, from…
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
