Portraits of Two Lineage Masters of the Kagyu Order: Phagmo Drupa (1110–1170) and Tashipel (1142–1210) (c. 1236–1310): Art, History and Details

Portraits of Two Lineage Masters of the Kagyu Order: Phagmo Drupa (1110–1170) and Tashipel (1142–1210) (c. 1236–1310) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

High-level leaders of Buddhist monastic institutions were frequent portrait subjects of early thangka painting (devotional cloth scrolls) in Central Tibet. The lama (Tibetan monk) on the right founded Taklung Monastery in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, which became an important institutional center of the Kagyu order. He is shown in discourse with his predecessor, whose teacher Gampopa (1079–1153), in turn, is the tiny gray-haired lama centered above them, between the colorful stylized mountain ranges. Their halos, lotus pedestal, and thrones with spitting elephant-trunked crocodiles and rearing griffins elevate them to the level of Buddhas and bodhisattvas. Despite their deification, they are still depicted with individualized facial features.

Object facts

• Title: Portraits of Two Lineage Masters of the Kagyu Order: Phagmo Drupa (1110–1170) and Tashipel (1142–1210)
• Date: c. 1236–1310
• Culture: Central Tibet
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera on sized cotton
• Dimensions: Overall: 51.4 x 39.4 cm (20 1/4 x 15 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Tibetan Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1987.146

A detail from the museum

The Five Cosmic Buddhas in their six-armed forms are aligned at the top.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1987.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 75, no. 2, 1988, pp. 30–71.
• Tilden, Jill. First Under Heaven: The Art of Asia. London: Hali Publications Ltd, 1997.
• Kossak, Steven, Jane Casey Singer, and Robert Bruce-Gardner. Sacred Visions: Early Paintings from Central Tibet. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.