This book is the only detailed description of the techniques and principles of the sacred art of Tibetan scroll painting.

The rich artistic heritage of Tibet reveals the depths of meditations of great masters, translated into the majestic abundance of iconic symbols that take the form of three-dimensional images or two-dimensional thankas. Tibetan Art is a comprehensive introduction to the complex iconography of thankas. It provides a glimpse of the mindground of this art and the land where it flourished. Although Tibetan Art portrays the historic Buddha Sakyamuni, the arhats, spiritual masters, great lamas, and founders of different religious lineages, the preponderance of its images depict supramundane beings. Predominantly these are: the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, female deities, protectors or tutelary gods (yi-dams), defenders of the faith, guardians of the four cardinal points, minor deities and supernatural beings.

Contains articles on all major areas of Tibetan art, including painting, sculpture, textiles, architecture and cave drawings. The authors of this study analyze and define Tibetan art styles and explore issues of chronology, provenance, patronage, iconography and religious function. -- Amazon.com.

Describes the techniques of the sacred art of Tibetan scroll painting.

The thangka is a way for Tibetan Buddhist monks to bring the life and teachings of the Buddha to the people through the visual medium of paint. These paintings were rolled up and taken on journeys, used as traveling altars, or hung when certain deitieswere honored. Meulenbeld takes us through 37 thangkas that present a pictorial journey of the life of Buddha, Siddhartha Guatama, and the evolution of Tibetan Buddhism. 37 color plates. Glossary. Bibliography. Index.

An extraordinary encyclopedia of Buddhist icons. Illustrating the Rin 'byung brgya rtsa, the Nar thang brgya rtsa, and the Vajravali, the book is based on a collection of over five hundred images of Tibetan deities. The images, presented in the book at full scale, were originally created by a master artist in the early nineteenth century to serve as initiation cards (tsakli). The original tsakli were woodblock prints, hand colored at the request of a Ch'ing Dynasty nobleman who had received the initiations. Such cards are used in ceremonies to introduce the practitioner to the deity and his or her practice. The paintings are housed in the Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich. Deities of Tibetan Buddhism is also an indispensable reference tool for Tibetologists, students of Mahayana Buddhism, and museum curators. Its extensive supplementary materials include English translations of the basic invocation texts; the associated visualization with descriptions of the deities' postures, attributes, and colors; and the dharanis and mantras used in their invocation. Co-editor Martin Willson spent more than a decade translating and documenting this work. He has provided detailed explanations of technical terms, enlightening explanatory notes, and glossaries documenting the discrepancies in the depictions. The extensive pictorial index, featuring drawings and text by Robert Beer, explains the symbolic meaning behind the deities' implements and adornments. The cross-referenced indices for Tibetan, Sanskrit, Mongolian, and English names and terms provide quick access to vast amounts of information. Co-editor Martin Brauen and the technical staff of the Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich have documented the relationship between this and other sets of initiation cards that exist elsewhere, as well as detailing the construction materials and methods involved in producing this set. Deities of Tibetan Buddhism is a reference book without peer, essential for any serious student of Tibetan and East Asian art and religion.

A presentation on the Tibetan Buddhist path to enlightenment, through the lens of an artist's eye and experience. The sacred arts play an essential, intrinsic role in Tibetan Buddhist practice. Here, one of the great practitioners and master artists of our time presents a guide to the Tibetan Buddhist path, from preliminary practices through enlightenment, from the artist's perspective. With profound wisdom, he shows how visual representations of the sacred in paintings, sculptures, mandalas, and stupas can be an essential support to practice throughout the path. This work, based on the author's landmark Tibetan text, The Path to Liberation, includes basic Buddhist teachings and practices, clearly pointing out the relevance of these for both the sacred artist and the practitioner, along with an overview of the history and iconography of Buddhist art.

This work is a two-volume set. The set reproduced here was prepared in the 1920s at the time of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama for the training of Buryiati doctors in Transbaikalia, and is a faithful facsimile of the originals which were created between 1687 and 1703. The English summaries of the treatise, presented with the colour plates in Volume One, and the translations of the actual inscriptions which are largely derived from it, and which are presented in Volume Two, contain a wealth of technical terminology for the study of Tibetan medicine.

Featuring several major works, including a painting of four minutely detailed mandalas by fifteenth-century Newari artists and the last two known commissions in the Beri style, The Nepalese Legacy in Tibetan Painting places Beri in a context more complex than previously imagined. --Book Jacket.

The present book is a first attempt at exploring the sacred painting traditions of Tibet from the mid-15th through 20th centuries on the basis of both the surviving pictorial remains and the extensive written sources that survive in the Tibetan language. The study of this period of Tibetan art history has in effect been neglected in recent years in favor of the earliest periods. Yet the vast majority of extant masterpieces of Tibetan Buddhist painting belong to this more recent period, and the relevant written and pictorial resources now available, though they have never been fully utilized until now, are in fact quite rich. The present study attempts in the first place to identify the great founders of the main schools of Tibetan painting and to locate references to their surviving works of sacred art. Through recourse to the artists own writings, if available, to the biographies of their main patrons, and to other contemporaneous or nearly contemporaneous sources, it has been possible to clarify many of the circumstances of the careers of such famous Tibetan painters as sMan-bla-don-grub, mKhyen-brtse-chen-mo and Nam-mkha-bkra-shis, who were the founders of the sMan-ris, mKhyen-ris and Karma sgar-bris traditions, respectively. For the convenience of students and researchers, the book includes a survey of the main available Tibetan sources and studies, both traditional and modern, as well as a detailed summary of previous Western research on this subject. It also presents the texts and translations of the most important passages from the main traditional sources. This richly illustrated volume also includes detailed indices, and it will be an indispensable guide and reference work for anyone interested in Tibetan art.