Beginning in the fifteenth century there was a gradual shift in Tibetan art from an Indic-centered aesthetic toward a more Chinese-centered one. This shift reflects the disappearance of Buddhism in India and Tibet’s increasingly close cultural, economic, and political ties to its northeastern Mongolian and Chinese neighbors.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, newly emerging Tibetan painting styles in Central Tibet were named after famous indigenous masters and artistic centers rather than adopted traditions such as Eastern Indian, Kashmiri, or Nepalese. These new styles, including the Menri, Khyenri, and Gardri, were known for their integration of Chinese-inspired landscapes and corresponding shift to increasingly green and blue palettes of malachite and azurite.
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Tibet
late 15th century
Chudapantaka is one of the sixteen arhats, the original followers of the Buddha. The arhat genre was imported to Tibet from China, and this Tibetan painting closely follows an early fifteenth-century composition produced in the Chinese Ming court (see inset). The early Ming emperors gave a large number of such paintings on silk to high-ranking Tibetan religious clerics.
Notice this Tibetan painting faithfully reproduces many aspects of the Chinese model, from figures to landscape, though somewhat more schematically. However, in the highly polished Chinese court productions, the opulence of ornamentation often competes for the viewer’s attention, whereas in this Tibetan work the divine figures are more emphasized.
This painting also includes a Tibetan innovation to this genre, a long-life deity, the Buddha Amitayus, hovering in the sky.
Arhat Ajita; China; Ming dynasty, Yongle period (1402–1424); mineral pigments on silk; 30 × 19 in. (78 × 50 cm); Collection of Robert Rosenkranz and Alexandra Munroe
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