699 - Thangka with Vajrakilaya, tempera on linen, Tibetan scroll painting

Thangka with Vajrakilaya, tempera on linen, Tibetan scroll painting Tempera on linen. At the centre a many-armed wrathful deity painted blue in union with his consort, Vajrakilaya: three faces – the middle one blue, the right one red, above them a white one –, each with three eyes, an open mouth and a crown of five skulls, the hair rising in red flames. The front hands hold a golden ritual dagger before the chest, the remaining arms carry among other things a trident and a bowl; green feathered wings spread out on both sides of the body. Around the hips a yellow tiger skin. The deity stands in a striding posture on two figures lying on the ground above a red plinth and a broad lotus throne, backed by a green nimbus and a mandorla of red flaming fire. All around, in several rows, smaller deities and lamas in their own flame mandorlas against a blue and green ground. Age-appropriate condition, slightly rubbed. Image 78 x 58 cm (HxW), framed in a narrow wooden moulding, frame bumped, frame width 2 cm Thangkas are scroll paintings of Tibetan Buddhism, painted on primed linen with mineral and vegetable colours and used for meditation and instruction; the iconography follows fixed canons of proportion which permit hardly any deviation. Wrathful deities such as Vajrakilaya are not evil powers but protective figures: their terror is directed against the obstacles on the path to insight, and the skulls and the wreath of flames stand for the transformation of destructive forces. The ritual dagger with a three-edged blade, which gives the deity its name, serves in ritual practice to pin down these obstacles symbolically. The pictorial scheme of the two interlocked figures stands for the joint working of method and wisdom.