Although early Tibetan art was predominantly oriented toward Indic cultures, Tibetan culture both influenced and absorbed successive Chinese artistic traditions. These connections were particularly close during periods when the emperor who ruled China adopted Tibetan Buddhism, invited Tibetan teachers to court, and sent art as gifts to major Tibetan monastic centers. Artistic dialogue was also sometimes catalyzed by third-party intermediaries who drew from both traditions simultaneously.
Hence Chinese imperial workshops adopted Tibetan Buddhist artistic conventions, and Tibet became a repository of Chinese art. These Chinese objects collected in Tibet gradually inspired Tibetan artists to adopt certain Chinese artistic conventions, such as landscape, into Tibetan painting.
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China
15th century
Tibetan Buddhism played a prominent role in the courts of the Mongolian Yuan (1271–1368) and early Chinese Ming (1368–1644) dynasties, resulting in the creation of Tibetan Buddhist art in the imperial ateliers. This depiction of a wrathful form of the deity Vajrapani is a Tibetan composition recreated in the Chinese medium of silk embroidery. Lotus and vase columns featuring mythical birds (garuda), snakes (naga), and water monsters (makara) are typical of fourteenth-century Tibetan works. They appear alongside multicolored billowing triple-lobed clouds with trailing tails typical of Chinese auspicious imagery. These stylized clouds in turn support disks presenting Vajrapani’s mantra in Tibetan script. Small coral beads and seed pearls are stitched into the central deity’s ornaments.
Learn more about Tibetan Buddhist icons produced in silk during the Yuan dynasty.
Learn more about Tibetan Buddhist images produced in the early Ming court.
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