A 16th-Century Ladakhi School of Buddhist Painting

In this paper the author discerns two periods in Ladakhi painting. The first, that of direct influence of Kashmiri aesthetics, continued up to the first half of the 14th century. He introduces the reader to the second and less-studied period, after the 14th century, when Ladakh turned to Tibet for inspiration, through a study of captioned portraits which reveal the links between the Ladakhi kings and the Drigung Kagyu tradition, for example at Tashi Chödzong and Basgo fortress. Inscriptions below some of the deities give information about the names of Ladakhi painters, along with their titles and places of origin. This, as the author notes, is a further corrective to the received idea that Buddhist art is anonymous (from Peter Skilling's review in "Orientations", 38/3, November-December 2007)