A Drukpa Kagyu thangka depicting the mandala of an emanation of Vajrayogini, Tibet, circa 17th century

Collection of Jack (1926-2017) and Muriel (1929-2019) Zimmerman.

Art of the Himalayas: Treasures from Nepal and Tibet, Newark Museum, Newark; Portland Art Museum, Portland; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix; Helen and Clay Frick Foundation, Pittsburgh; Virginia Museum of Replica Handbags s, Richmond; Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena; and Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, 1992, cat. no. 106.

Pratapaditya Pal, Art of the Himalayas: Treasures from Nepal and Tibet, New York, 1991, cat. no. 106.

Pratapaditya Pal, 'Himalayan Mandalas in the Zimmerman Collection', Orientations, February 1992, p. 120.

The present mandala depicts a rare form of Vajrayogini that corresponds to the iconography of her consort Chakrasamvara, with four heads and twelve arms, holding a similar panoply of ritual implements including the flayed elephant skin held in her uppermost hands and draped behind her, and the heads of Brahma in the lowered left hand. Like Chakrasamvara, she steps to her left in alidha posture and tramples figures on the lotus pedestal. The goddess is surrounded by six four-armed dakinis on the spokes of a flaming chakra wheel. Four-armed theriomorphic goddesses with animal and bird heads guard the portals of the palace. The mandala rests on a circular lotus surrounded by the eight charnel grounds and a ring of multi-coloured flames. Tibetan Kagyu lineage holders and adepts and Indian mahasiddhas flank Vajradhara and Naro Dakini in the clouds above, with a diminutive figure of Milarepa depicted at the painted borders of the thangka above Vajradhara. A six-armed emanation of the central deity appears in the lower left of the picture, above the presiding Kagyu hierarch seated on a tiger skin and communing with the wealth god Jambhala. Vajravarahi dances above White Tara and Avalokiteshvara Shadaksari to the lower right of the mandala. And an entourage of Vajrayogini appears with Panjarnata and Chaturbhuja Mahakala to the left and right of the lower register, flanking a bowl of offerings on a rocky outcrop.

Compare the portraiture, and elements of composition and landscape, to a central Tibetan Vajrabhairava thangka from circa 1600, illustrated in Jackson, A History of Tibetan Painting, Vienna, 1996, pl. 27; and the depiction of the cloud-borne siddhas and adepts with the donor figures of a 17th century Vajradhara thangka in Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet, expanded edition, New York, 2000, cat. no. 148. The yellow, blue and red painted borders of all three examples are typical of 17th century central Tibetan works where textile mounts are often stitched to the outer margins of the painted borders, in contrast with later periods when wide painted borders are dispensed with and the textile frame would be stitched along the edge of the picture itself. The diminutive figure of Milarepa that crosses over into the borders of the mandala would thus still have been visible when the textile mounts were attached (now removed but with lines of stitch holes remaining around the outer margins).