The central yogi is dressed in a rainbow patterned dhoti with lotus roundels depicting the Chakra points of the Kundalini. He stands on a lotus in a landscape with the guardians of the directions below, Siddhas and adepts at either side, white and golden Vasudhara in the sky above.
Details
- Title : COSMIC PURUSHA
- Year : 19th Century
- Classification : Painting
- Medium : Distemper on cloth
- Dimension : 52 x 34 3/4 in. (132 x 88.5 cm.)
- Accession No : GNM_LOT 23_PUN_39
- Country/ Geo-location : Nepal
- Collection : PUNDOLE’S
- Status : LIVE AUCTION The Fine Arts Sale (M0007) (as per DEC 2021)
- ESTIMATED :
- SOLD :
- PROVENANCE : Formerly in the Collection of Ernst and Angela Jucker, Ettingen, Switzerland Hugo E. Kreijger, Kathmandu Valley Painting, The Jucker Collection, Boston, 1999, p. 100, no. 37.
- DESCRIPTION : REGISTERED ANTIQUITY - NON-EXPORTABLE ITEM (Please refer to the Terms and Conditions of Sale at the back of the catalogue.)
- NOTE : This 19th Century paubha of the Cosmic Man is different from other versions that show the Buddhist representation of cosmic theophanies. Unlike earlier versions which show the deities as thousand-armed, the current lot shows an '...immoveable, towering pillar-like figure of the yogi with the six chakras on his body with the surrounding flux and motion of the samsara.' This difference, as Dr. Pal explains, is due to both 'the styles employed as to the individuality of the artists.' (Dr. Pratapaditya Pal, 'The Jucker Collection: A Personal Appreciation', Sotheby's The Jucker Collection of Himalayan Paintings, New York, March 2006, p. 8.) The work can also be compared with a Hindu representation of the same subject, see Dr. Pratapaditya Pal, Himalayas, An Aesthetic Adventure, Chicago, 2003, no. 48. For a full discussion of a very similar painting in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art see John Huntington and Dina Bangdel, The Circle of Bliss, Buddhist Meditational Art, Chicago, 2003, p. 232, no. 63. And for another similar painting in the Ford Collection see Detlef Ingo Lauf and John Gilmore Ford, Secret Revelations of Tibetan Thangkas, Aurum Verlag Freiburg im Breisgau, 1976, pp. 164-5, pl. 60.