Portrait painting

Portrait painting

Warmly welcome visit our website : http://www.art-ych.com

This article, based on a lecture delivered to a symposium held in Leiden on the function and meaning of Buddhist art, appears in a book entitled Function and Meaning in Buddhist Art painting, edited by K.R. van Kooij and H. van der Veere. Gonda Indological Series, vol. 2 (Groningen: E. Forsten, 1995).

Tibetan art regularly functions as icon, intermediary between man and divinity. It subsists within a highly sophisticated liturgy designed to evoke a deity for purposes of worship and communication. But even iconic art is subject to the laws of social and political life; and every work of art functions and acrylic painting has meaning on many levels.

One facet of Tibetan iconic art is to be found in early portrait painting. Portraiture figured prominently in Tibetan art between ca. 1000 and 1400 A.D., and yet almost nothing is known about its functions and its significance.1 This essay addresses two main questions: What aesthetic and theoretical guides did artists observe in painting historical persons? And what social, political, and religious purposes did portraiture painting serve in pre-fifteenth century Tibet?


Plate 1
Some of Tibet's finest examples of early portraiture painting are still preserved at Alchi (al-chi), a monastic complex along the Indus River in Ladakh, founded around 1200 A.D.2 Alchi's two earliest structures, the Dukhang ('du-khang, "Assembly Hall") and the Sumtsek Lhakhang (gsum-brtsegs lha-khang, "Three-tiered Temple") both contain numerous examples of portraiture. A narrative along the east wall of the Assembly Hall features three figure painting: a man seated and holding a staff, a woman who faces him and offers a stemmed-cup, and a young man (an observation deduced from his size), presumably their son.3 (pl. 1)

Note that the two main figures are haloed, a phenomenon common in Tibetan depiction of royal, noble, and saintly persons. In this instance, the halos are likely to reflect both a pre-Buddhist Tibetan notion of divine kingship and the imported Indian notion of cakravartin, the divinely inspired ruler.4 An inscription below the scene positively identifies these figure painting as royalty, stating that the king and queen, having given royal sanction for the temple's construction, were refreshing themselves in the region.5 Their names and their precise dates