EASTERN TIBET, PALPUNG MONASTERY, 18TH-19TH CENTURY

The present painting depicts Buddha Shakyamuni at center seated on a lotus base with his hands in bhumisparshamudra, representing the moment he called the earth to witness his enlightenment. Various vignettes depicted throughout the landscape appear to include moments in the previous lives of the Buddha, the stories known as jatakas. Due to the painting's close adherence to the Situ Panchen style of Eastern Tibet, it is possible this painting comes from a set of eleven paintings that depict the Jataka tales as described by Situ Panchen Chokyi Jungne in 1726. Such paintings depict Buddha Shakyamuni at center with the hundred Jataka tales represented as small illustrations spread throughout the sparsely-inhabited landscape of all eleven paintings. Compare the present work with a painting in the Shechen Archives assertively associated with the Situ Panchen Jataka set, illustrated on Himalayan Art Resources, item no. 15408.
Handprints and an inscription on the back of the painting indicate the work was dedicated by an important personage, likely of Palpung Monastery. The inscription is translated as "The Buddha, as the sun, is the embodiment of a supreme luminous appearance free from internal darkness, I prostrate to the internal maker of daylight."