Provenance Information

This decorative element from a funerary stupa (chorten) features the protective deity of Lhasa, Palden Lhamo. She is seated on a wild donkey that rests on a lotus base. She brandishes a sword in each hand and has three eyes. Her jewelry has turquoise, lapis, and other semi-precious stone inlay. She is surrounded by attendant deities. The elaborately decorated Densatil Monastery, first built in the second half of the twelfth century, was one of the wealthiest monasteries in Tibet. During the second half of the 1960s, as part of China’s Cultural Revolution, the monastery was destroyed. Decorative elements of varying quality from the monastery’s many chorten are held in public and private collections in the United States, Europe, and China, including the Freer and Sackler Gallery and the Capital Museum, Beijing.This Palden Lhamo is a particularly fine example exhibiting great vivacity and power. The work was acquired in 1993 from Swiss dealer Enrico Rocoroni in Paris. It will be an important addition to the collection of Tibetan sculptures and painting at Asia Society and makes an excellent complement to the Asia Society’s fourteenth century painting of Green Tara, which also comes from central Tibet.

Exhibition Information

Not yet exhibited publicly to our knowledge.

Publication Information

Not yet published to our knowledge.

Section of the AAMD Guidelines relied upon for the exception to 1970

Cumulative facts and circumstances

Explain why the object fits the exception set forth above

The work is an important addition to the collection of Asia Society because it fills a major gap in the fourteenth-century metal sculpture from Central Tibet. Although the work has yet to be exhibited or published,the important monastery that the work is purportedly from, Densatil, along with others in the region, was completely demolished along with all of its interior during the Cultural Revolution (the latter half of the 1960s). Since the demolition, remnants from the interior memorial stupas, such as this image of Palden Lhamo, have entered many collections in Europe, the United States, and Asia, including public and private collections in China. Asia Society Museum seeks to display, care for, and preserve this fragment so that it accessible to scholars and the general public wishing to learn about Tibet’s history and its past artistic production.