Beschreibung:

A Rare Silk-Embroidered Thangka of Mahakala, depicting the six-armed deity striding in alidhasana on an elephant-headed prostrate figure, the ferocious face with three eyes and an open mouth and crowned with flaming hair, stretching an elephant skin across his back, with an animal skin around his waist, lavishly adorned with a necklace of severed heads, with his right hand brandishing a kartika and his left holding a blood-filed kapala, mounted with silk brocade, late Qing dynasty, c. 1900, c. 123 x 100 cm; wear, mounting with tears PROVENANCE: Purchased by a Swedish collector at Spink Gallery in London, during the 1970's NOTE: Qing Dynasty embroidered thangkas are rare compared with numerous painted examples. They were expensive and highly valued. Although the iconography of these thangkas is Tibetan in origin, Tibetan artists and craftsmen were not engaged in the production of woven and embroidered thankas, this being a specifically Chinese tradition. LITERATURE: Compare with an embroidered thangka in; The Art of Tibet, Pratapaditya Pal, New York, 1969, p. 144, image p. 86