Tsong Khapa, Founder of the Geluk Order (c. 1440–70): Art, History and Details

Tsong Khapa, Founder of the Geluk Order (c. 1440–70) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The Buddhist order to which the Dalai Lamas belong was founded by Tsong Khapa (1357–1419), whose image is seen here as the large central figure holding his hands in the teaching mudra. He wears the pointed golden hat that is the insignia for monks of the Geluk order. At the level of his ears are the sword and book, emblems of Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom. These emblems allude to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition that accorded Tsong Khapa the status of being an emanation of Manjushri. This extraordinary, sumptuously rendered painting, made only decades after his death, retains elements of portraiture in the facial features that become formalized in later works, especially from the mid-1600s onward, when the Geluk monks dominated the Tibetan theocracy. He is surrounded by lineage masters, many in lively gestures of debate, whose analyses of doctrines and practices led to Tsong Khapa's final formulation of the Lam Rim text on the stages of the path to enlightenment, which is foundational to the Geluk order.

Object facts

• Title: Tsong Khapa, Founder of the Geluk Order
• Date: c. 1440–70
• Culture: Central Tibet
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera and gold on cotton
• Dimensions: Overall: 91.5 x 75 cm (36 x 29 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Tibetan Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1981.33

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1981.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 69, no. 2 (February 1982): 39–82.
• Huntington, John C., Dina Bangdel, and Robert A. F. Thurman. The Circle of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art. Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2003.

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.