Tibetan Paintings. A Study of Tibetan Thankas Eleventh to nineteenth Centuries
Ravi Kumar/Sotheby Publications, 1984. 1st Edition. Quarto, publisher's carmine cloth, spine and upper board gilt, original illustrated dust jacket.
Southeast Asian and Himalayan art scholar and curator Pratapaditya Pal’s guide to Tibetan thankas. Roughly translating to "recorded message" in Tibetan, thanka is an ancient form of Buddhist painting, usually applied to cotton or silk, depicting deities or other significant figures. The first serious effort to study the art form since Giuseppe Tucci’s Tibetan Painted Scrolls (1949), this monograph historically and critically examines the aesthetics of the thanka with an emphasis on the styles that developed between the 11th and 15th centuries. Accompanying Pal’s text are over 100 color and black-and-white plates of thankas from museums and collections, many never before printed or published. Owner ink inscription to front endpaper. Blacning to cloth at bottom corners; unclipped dust jacket fine. Item #5364
$30.00