Himalayan Art Resources

Painting Set: Avadana Composition (Situ Panchen Design) Main Page

Avadana Composition (Situ Design) | Shakyamuni Buddha Main Page

Subjects, Topics & Types:
- Avadana Description (below)
- Avadana Stories Main Page
- Avadana Stories Outline Page
- Situ Designed Painting Sets
- Situ Panchen Outline Page
- Masterworks
- Confusions
- Others...

Avadana Set Details:
- Twenty-three compositions (23)
- First composition: Shakyamuni Buddha
- Last composition: Situ Panchen Chokyi Jungne
- Twenty-one compositions of Avadana stories: composition 2 through 22

Painting Sets:
- Dharma
- Essen/Jucker
- Gandharva
- Hahn 1
- Kumar 1
- LACMA/Rubin
- Rubin 1
- Rubin 2
- Rubin 3
- Rubin 4
- Rubin 5
- Rubin 6
- Rubin 7
- Rubin 8
- Others...

There are numerous ways in which the Avadana teaching stories have been illustrated in art. In the New Menri style of painting, beginning in the 17th century, there are at least two methods of composition based on emphasizing different characters and meanings from the 108 avadana stories. The painting style emphasized at Palpung Monastery, founded by Situ Panchen Chokyi Jungne (1700-1774) in the early to mid 18th century, follows in the Kham Style (kham dri) and places the narrative stories on a much more open landscape compared with the Central Tibetan New Menri Style of painting. Situ Panchen designed this style in 1733 in memory of the deaths of the Karmapa and Shamarpa in China.

There are twenty-three paintings in the Situ Panchen designed composition. The first painting in the set is of Buddha Shakyamuni and the last painting in the set is a portrait of Situ Panchen himself. (See a sequential list of the paintings and story numbers and story names).

Jeff Watt 5-2000

Bibliography:

Leaves of the Heaven Tree, the Great Compassion of the Buddha by Padma Chopel, 19th century. (Based on the Bodhisattvavadanakalpata of Kshemendra, 11th century). Translated by Deborah Black. Berkeley: Dharma Publishing, 1997.

Patron and Painter, Situ Panchen and the Revival of the Encampment Style. David P. Jackson. Rubin Museum of Art, 2009.