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Portraits of Two Lineage Masters of the Kagyu Order: Phagmo Drupa (1110–1170) and Tashipel (1142–1210)
c. 1236–1310
- Medium
- Gum tempera on sized cotton
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Overall: 51.4 x 39.4 cm (20 1/4 x 15 1/2 in.)
- Culture
- Central Tibet
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
High-level leaders of Buddhist monastic institutions were frequent portrait subjects of early thangka painting (devotional cloth scrolls) in Central Tibet. The lama (Tibetan monk) on the right founded Taklung Monastery in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, which became an important institutional center of the Kagyu order. He is shown in discourse with his predecessor, whose teacher Gampopa (1079–1153), in turn, is the tiny gray-haired lama centered above them, between the colorful stylized mountain ranges.
Their halos, lotus pedestal, and thrones with spitting elephant-trunked crocodiles and rearing griffins elevate them to the level of Buddhas and bodhisattvas. Despite their deification, they are still depicted with individualized facial features.
