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Michael Henss: Thirteenth or Eighteenth Century? A

response to David Weldons On Recent Attributions

to Aniko

Thirteenth or Eighteenth Century?

A response to David WeldonsOn Recent Attributions to

Aniko(asianart.com, October 21, 2010)

by Michael Henss

February 14, 2011

This article is a rejoinder to the article by David Weldon, "On

Recent Attributions to Aniko"

Please click herefor a forum on this subject where you can post

your views and impressions on the subject of Aniko attributions.

(click on small images for large images with captions)

Fig. 1

It is my opinion that Nepalese and Tibetan art of the 13th and

14th century was influenced considerably by Indian Pala stylemodels in a great variety of forms and atelier traditions.

However, a closer look at all these Pala-Newari and Pala-

Tibetan or Nepalo-Tibetan artistic traditions will naturally help

identifying specific stylistic groups beyond a simple Pala pattern

which I feel characterisesin different degreesthe great

majority of Himalayan art works of that period.

When emphasising more the Indian content of the ClevelandGreen Tara (fig. 13; Weldon, fig.1) as David Weldon does with
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regard to some earlier Pala period elements in that painting, he

clearly underestimates the distinctive Nepalese profile of this

masterpiece datable on stylistic grounds to the third quarter of

the 13th century. No comparable 13th century Indian paintings

exist which could have served as models or to some extent as a

source of inspiration.

Fig. 2

Fig.

3

Fig.

4

Fig.

5

The only other - and in my opinion approximately contemporary

- Newar paintings of a similar - though not of the same -

individual style as the Cleveland Tara are the three Tathagatas in

the Boston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia museums (Weldon,

fig.6). These paintings find close parallels or rather reflectionsamong the sixteen large mandala paintings in the Changma

temple (Lha khang byang ma) at the Great Sutra Hall in Sakya

executed after 1280 by no doubt Nepalese artists. These murals

are in some sections originally preserved but so far are quite

unknown. [1] They are in composition and stylistic details so

closely related to the slightly later mandalas at Shalu that they

can be with some probability attributed to the same atelier. As

Weldon rightly suggests, there would be no need to construct forthese Shalu paintings, as hitherto has been done, an art

historical detour via the Yuan China art milieu at Beijing. [2]
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Fig.

6

However, whereas Weldon accepts the possible authorship by

Aniko for the Cleveland Tara (as Kossak and I have suggestedsome years ago), he rejects unconvincingly any further

attribution to what might be called an Aniko style in the sense

of an atelier tradition or a related group of some roughly

contemporary or slightly later sculptures.

Weldons analysis of four images he borrowed from my book

[3] leaves out eight more statues that were documented in my

more detailed papers from 2006 to 2009. [4] Weldon seems tofollow the motto What is not known (or recognised yet) cannot

exist when he declares them all briefly and without proper

arguments as being made in a revivalist style for Tibetan

patronsof 18th century at the earliest. But most of them in

fact date to the 13th century such as for example the Newark

(fig. 1) and Lhasa (figs. 5,6) Avalokiteshvaras or the two

Vajrapani statuettes in the Philadelphia and Lhasa museums

(figs. 8, 9), all of a very distinctive style with decorative inlays,

which by no means can be regarded as 18th century copies. [5]

A similar Nepalese copper image of a bodhisattva Maitreya with

gold and silver inlays preserved in the Potala Palace is another

addition to the small "corpus" of the "Aniko style group"

comparable with the Lhasa Avalokiteshvara in material, metal

inlay (though slightly less refined), design of the lotus throne

and of its petals.(fig. 7) [6] One may also note a Nepalese

Vajrapani statue once in the Ford Collection, Baltimore, which
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indeed does not conform to any regional convention that has

yet been identified [7]

Fig.

7

Fig.

8

Fig.

9

Fig.

10

With few exceptions Tibetan stylistic copies of earlier

prototypes from Kashmir, Pala India or Nepal made in the 18th

century can be recognised by a trained eye relatively

easily. However, very refined metal inlays [8] (figs. 1, 8,

9) reflect earlier contemporary Indian and Newari painting style

textile patterns as seen in the Cleveland painted Tara and San

Francisco Green Tara kesi and cannot be attributed to the 18th c

[9]. How Indian Pala style models were transformed into Indo-Nepalese as well as Indo-Tibetan statuary of a closely related

stylistic physiognomy may be shown by two ca. mid-13th

century bodhisattva images in the Beijing Capital and Palace

Museums (fig. 3) [10]

Fig.

11

Fig.

12

Fig.

13

Fig.

14

Weldon also misinterprets the San Francisco Green Tara Kesi

(fig. 12; Weldon, fig.15 [11], which in proportions and design iswithout any doubt clearly associated with the Cleveland Tara
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(fig. 13) and other Nepalese paintings of that period, no matter if

woven around 1295 or 1315. Indeed this textile is the sole

representative of the famous textile image production supervised

by Aniko at the Yuan court. And the ornamental vocabulary as

referred to by Weldon with regard to other 14th century kesi

such as the Metropolitan Museum Vajrabhairava mandala does

not change from one decade to the other, especially in fabric

images which are often manufactured much later than their

painted models: like for example the well known early 14th

century kesi Acala in the Lhasa Tibet Museum (fig.14) which is,

in my opinion - in contrast with the usually suggested Xixia

Tangut origin - a later woven reproduction of an early 13th

century Tibetan painting. The kesi was probably made in the

imperial Yuan dynasty ateliers in Hangzhou and sent to Tibet in

the late 13th or early 14th century. [12] A production of the

Acala kesi around 1300 would be supported by the following

arguments: the floral ornament and the lan dza sript frieze on the

original(!) fabric border do not exist much before 1300. The

pearls stitched on the figures in the lower register (only one is

preserved) indicate a Mongolian period origin. And some

linguistic inconsistencies in the Tibetan inscription point out to alater non-Tibetan textile atelier. So what does it matter for our

stylistic considerations in view of an Aniko style (which no

doubt did exist!) whether this kesi was made in the late 13th or

earlier 14th century? And how do Pala style forerunners such as

the Potala Green Tara (Weldon fig.14) rule out a Newar-

Tibetan sculptural style, which is based anyway, like so many

other Himalayan statuary traditions, on earlier Pala prototypes?

Fig.15

Fig.16

Fig.17

Fig.18
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Unfortunately Ulrich von Schroeders Buddhist Sculptures in

Tibet (Hongkong2001) does not include sufficiently later

Nepalese and Tibetan statue traditions, and no images of a genre

as reviewed here, of which, however, examples may still exist in

Sakya monastery or in the Potala Palace collection.

Other attributions to Aniko or to his style such as the Maitreya

painting in the Chicago Art Institute (Weldon fig.7) or of the gilt

silver Sadaksari-Avalokiteshvara in the Virginia Museum of

Fine Arts (Weldon fig.10) are rightly rejected by Weldon. A

thorough analysis will easily identify both images as much later

syncretistic replicas where floral ornaments and figural style

(painting) or the design and technique of the gilt lotus petals(statue) alone rule out a Yuan dynasty date. And those

misleading attributions and chronologies by John Huntington

have not been the only ones in his otherwise comprehensive and

inspiring publications [13]

Fig. 19

Further studies after my publications in 2007-2009 suggest,

however, that the attribution of two very similar statues to the

"Aniko style group" has to be reconsidered. The Green Tarastatuettes in the Potala Palace and in the Tibet Museum at Lhasa

appear to be stylistic copies of the 18th century, both compared

with other revivalist images of a highly refined quality and made

in an extraordinary "authentic" style (fig. 15,16). [14]

With reference to David Weldons summary at the end of his

review and to my recent attribution of some still existing figural

and decorative metalwork to Aniko such as the upper part of the

repouss throne-back-nimbus (gdan khri rgyab yol)commissioned in 1261/62 according to the Fifth Dalai Lamas
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dKar chag by Sa skya bZang po, the principal of the Sakya

leaders in the 1260s, mentioned as made by the Nepali A ni

ka gui gung la, and the architectural bracket system of the

canopy-baldaqin enshrining the Jowo Shakyamuni image in the

Lhasa Jokhang temple [15] I hope that this response may

contribute to a less confusing picture of what the Aniko style

may have been like.

Michael Henss

December 23, 2010

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