4th Shamarpa, Chodrag Yeshe Palzang
The Himalayan Art Resource website recently added a page for Karma Gardri sculpture style. One can find beautiful examples of sculptures of previous incarnations of the Karmapa and Shamarpa. Some examples can be seen below (click to enlarge).
This set of three stunning 19th Century Tibetan thangka paintings (click on each to enlarge) was just posted to the Himalayan Art Resource website. The three composition painting set depicts the Karma Kagyu Great Seal (Skt. Mahamudra) Lineage ending with the 14th Gyalwa Karmapa, Thegchog Dorje (1798-1868).
6th Shamarpa Mipham Chokyi Wangchuk
The Himalayan Art Resource website recently posted a picture of this marvellous 18th century thangka painting (click to enlarge) of Mipam Chokyi Wangchuk, The 6th Shamarpa (1584-1629). The 6th Shamarpa is an exceptionally important figure in the Karma Kagyu school, holding the lineage between the 9th and 10th Karmapas. His debating skills were so extraordinary that he was known as the “Pandita of the North, the Omniscient Shamarpa in whom Manjushri delights”. Famed for his deep insight, he had memorised fifty volumes of sutras and tantras by the age of seventeen, and was later to write ten texts explaining both the sutra and tantra traditions. He was the teacher of Desi Tsangpa, who ruled central Tibet, and it was while he was travelling in east Tibet – successfully playing the mediator in a regional disturbance – that he recognised and became the teacher of the 10th Karmapa, Choying Dorje. Subsequent travels took him to Nepal, where he taught Buddhism in the original Sanskrit to the king, Laxman Naran Singh, and to other devotees, and where he eventually died in the Helambu mountains, near a cave in which Milarepa, Tibet’s great yogi, had once meditated.
9th Karmapa Wangchuk Dorje with Black Crown rendered in perfect detail
The superb Himalayan Art website recently posted this beautiful new image of an 18th Century thangka of the 9th Karmapa, Wangchuk Dorje (click on images to enlarge).
Close-up of Red Wisdom's face
The Himalayan Art website has just posted this blog entry aptly entitled “Sculptural Perfection”:
This Vajravarahi sculpture, for its time and type, is surely one of the finest ever created. Also view the five detail images. The face is beautiful although likely re-painted in the recent past. The body proportions and movement are excellent. The ornamentation is precise and detailed, also textually accurate. The elaborate scarf (not part of the textual description) is beautifully excessive with studded semi-precious stones – likely original to the piece – framing the central figure and bringing the entire sculpture to a fullness that is greater than the sum of the parts. Sculptural perfection – art and iconography!
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