The work proposed here is the product of adventurous expeditions that the great Marchigian explorer made in Tibet and throughout central Asia. Concerning Buddhist paintings on scrolls or thangka, the "Tibetan Painted Scrolls" (1949), with their 798 pages and 256 colour plates, still constitute an immense patrimony for anthropologists and scholars of Oriental art and culture.
Volume I of "Tibetan Painted Scrolls" is a vast survey of five hundred years of Tibetan cultural and religious history. Here professor Tucci, a noted scholar of Sanskrit, delineates different Buddhist lineages, their monuments and their traditions, giving a general survey of Vajrayana Buddhism. All these descriptions, since they have failed to survive the Cultural Revolution, are now all the more significant to Tibetan studies.
The second part of Volume I is an unprecedented study on Tibetan thangka painting. It is divided in fifteen chapters, among which feature "Symbolical Meaning of Colors and Lines," "To Paint is to Evoke," "Iconometry" and "Consecration of Thangkas".
Unobtainable for so many years, Mimesis International now puts back into circulation this indispensable work for the study of Tibetan culture. It is a precious testimony of the religious iconography of Tibetan Buddhism, for the great part lost, dispersed or stolen.
Tibetan Painted Scrolls: Part 1, Giuseppe Tucci, Mimesis Edizioni, Paperback, 398 pages, 2015, $33.00
Giuseppe Tucci was not only the most complete scholar of Oriental disciplines Italy has ever had, but he was also legendary across Asia and internationally renowned as one of the finest Tibetanologists.
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