Collectively designated under the name adibuddha, “Buddha of the Beginning”, these deities can be held as the manifestation of a primordial Buddha, immanent and transcendent, from whom proceeds the ensemble of the doctrine revealed in our age by the historic Buddha Shakyamuni. In the Himalayan world, Vajrasattya is more specifically perceived as the personification of the fundamental purity of the spirit. Surrounded here by eight bodhisattva, Vajrasattya wraps his left arm around the waist of his consort seated by his side. He is holding the two most essential objects of his function. The “lightning diamond” vajra, male symbol representing the indestructible nature of the Awakening, but also Compassion, appears in the palm of his right hand; the ghanta “little bell”, female synonym of Wisdom, is held in his left hand, resting on his thigh level with his waist.
This painting, one of the oldest in the Museum’s Himalayan collection, reveals Tibetan art’s great indebtedness to the stylistic and iconographic vocabulary of the Buddhist Pala dynasty, that prospered in the North-East of India and Bangladesh between the 8th and 12th centuries: flowing, wavy lines of the bodies, moreover far from realistic in their proportions, faces with angular outlines, a contrasted palette dominated by tonalities of blue, red, yellow, and white, modelling achieved by the juxtaposition of more or less dense tonalities in each chromatic scale.
From a typological point of view, this painting, of which are missing the upper and lower parts featuring on a smaller scale other deities and various religious personages, belongs to the category of thangka, “thing to be unrolled”. These works, supports both of meditation and teaching, play an important role during rituals. Traditionally painted on cotton fabric, sometimes on silk for some exceptional pieces, Tibetan thangka are crafted in a complex process: from the execution of the drawing, in keeping with precise iconometric and iconographic rules, to the colouring with essentially mineral pigments. Traditionally the painting is completed by a mount consisting, for the oldest examples, of two trapezoidal strips of cloth, sewn at the top and bottom, then fitted with rods keeping the work flat when it is hung and exhibited to the eyes of the faithful or making it easier to roll up when not being used.
