Artist: Khyentse Chenmo
Khyenri Main PageKhyentse Chenmo (mkhyen brtse chen mo) was born at Gangto (sgang stod), a place in Gongkar (gong dkar), in the Lhokha region, not far from where Gongkar Dorjeden Monastery (gong dkar rdo rje ldan), also known as Gongkar Chode (gong dkar chos sde), would be built in the middle of the fifteenth century. The date of his birth is unknown, and scholars continue to debate whether he was born in the early fifteenth century or as late as the middle of the century.[1] Very few details of his personal life are known, and few pieces of art can be definitely ascribed to Khyentse Chenmo's own hand.
Khyentse Chenmo is known in sources as "The Great Khyentse of Gongkar" (gong dkar mkhyen brtse chen mo), "Khyentse of Gongkar" (gong dkar mkhyen brtse), or simply Khyentsewa (mkhyen brtse ba), which likely means he attained the pinnacle of knowledge. Several sources add "tulku" (sprul sku) to his title, here meaning "magical emanation," a trope often given to master artists in reference to their skill. His lay ordination name was Nampar Gyelwa (rnam par rgyal ba), and so he is also known as Genyen Namgyel (dge bsnyen rnam rgyal). Sources also know him as Genyen Tashi (dge bsnyen brkra shis) and a shortened form Master Getre (mkhas pa dge bkras) [2]
Khyentse Chenmo should not be confused with Jamyang Khyentse Wangchuk (byams dbangs mkhyen brtse dbang phyug, 1524–1568), the disciple of Tsarchen Losel Gyatso (tshar chen blo gsal rgya mtsho, 1502–1566/67).
Training as an Apprentice Artist
Khyentse studied art in the 1430s or early 1440s under a painter in Gyantse. This was during the reign of the prince Rabten Kunzang Pak (rab brtan kun bzang 'phags, 1389–1442) who, during his thirty-year reign, built Gyantse into a rival of the ruling Pakmodru family. He was a great patron of the arts centered around the Pelkhor Chode complex (dpal 'khor chos sde), the famous stūpa of which still survives.
A fellow student was Mentangpa Menla Dondrub (sman thang pa sman bla don grub) of Lhodrak, who, like Khyentse, would go on to lead major art projects. Khyentse's and Mentangpa's teachers appear to have been Dopa Tregyel (rdo pa bkras rgyal), who may be the same person as Ponmoche Peljor Rinchen (dpon mo che dpal 'jor rin chen), and Sonam Peljor (bsod nams dpal 'jor), to whom Mentangpa expressed veneration and who are known to have been master painters at Pelkhor Chode at the time.[3]
Khyentse and Mentangpa were also inspired by Chinese art that was available in Tibet thanks to the patronage of Yuan and Ming emperors who commissioned Buddhist art and gave it to Tibetan hierarchs. Tibetan artists drew Chinese stylistic elements from this art, including natural features and animals, and incorporated them in Tibetan painting. Khyentse and Mentangpa, like their teachers before them, would have studied examples of such art at Gyantse. Khyentse Chenmo's painting style has come to be known as Khyenri (mkhyen ris), while Mentangpa's is Menri (sman ris). This contrasted sharply to the established Nepalese-inspired Beri style (dpe ris) especially popular in Tsang, with dominant red palette heavily adorned with delicate foliate scrolling patterns and often grid-like compositions of human figures. According to the Fifth Dalai Lama (ta la'i bla ma 05 ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, 1617–1682), the difference between Khyenri and Menri is largely that Khyenri excelled at wrathful deities and Menri in peaceful deities.[4]
Major Projects as a Master Artist
Following their apprenticeships, while Mentangpa stayed in Tsang, Khyentse left the Gyantse area and returned to his home district of Lhokha in U.
By the 1460s, Khyentse Chenmo was leading major projects, heading teams of assistants, and decorating entire monasteries. His best-known major project was at Gongkar Chode, beginning in 1464 and lasting for twelve years, under the patronage of the monastery's founder, Gongkar Dorjedenpa Kunga Namgyel (gong dkar rdo rje gdan pa kun dga' rnam rgyal, 1432–1496).
Jackson quotes the fifteenth-century historian Gyaton Jangchub Wangyel (rgya ston byang chub rnam rgyal), from his biography of Gongkarwa:
In just one cycle of [twelve] years the entire temple together with its sacred contents [including many sculptures] was completed. Moreover, because of the differences of the seasons of summer and winter, the time actually available to the workers was just half of that. Hence if we consider regarding even a fairly negligible project that we try to achieve now, if we think of the difficulties and efforts involved and how long it takes, then the completion of [the large and ornate] Gongkar monastery was nothing less than the magical deed of an emanated [divine] being, and it cannot be fathomed by ordinary people.[5]
Jangchub Wangyel continued:
Moreover, in order that the noble venerable one [i.e. Dorjedenpa] could achieve a vast wave of service to the Buddha's Doctrine, thanks to a part of the lord's own wisdom appearing in the form of an artist (rig byed), [there was] the miraculously emanated great being Khyentsewa, whose fingers could produce all the Buddha's mandalas in their entirety as if they were actually present.[6]
Gongkarwa's mother, Dorje Denma (rdo rje ldan ma, d. circa 1490), who was also a patron of the Buddhist arts, may be depicted in one of Vajradhara that Khyentse Chenmo painted for Gonkarwa, sitting among a group of patrons that populate the bottom register of the painting holding a tray of jewels.[7]
Based on later accounts of the monastery, Fermer, Losal Dondup, and Jampal Gawa identify several surviving murals at Gongar Chode as having been done by Khyentse Chenmo. These include a large Buddha and retinu in the inner sanctuary (gtsang khang), murals of the 108 episodes of the previous lives of the Buddha from the Avadānakalpalatā on the outer walls of the assembly hall, a Vajrabhairava statue in the Bhairava Chapel, the walls of the Hevajra Chapel and the Upper Protector Chapel (mdon khang steng ma) in the second floor, and the walls of the Vajradhātu Chapel on the third floor. He also created larger-than-life clay statues of Lamdre lineage masters for the Guru Chapel on the fourth floor. They also consider it likely that Khyentse Chenmo and his nephew created the images of the Sakya founders and Lamdre master on the on the entrance walls to the inner sanctum.
Fermer, Losal Dondup, and Jampal Gawa also note that Khyentse Chenmo created the illustrations for Jetsun Drakpa Gyeltsen's Tree of Realization (mngon rtogs ljon shing) carved in 1543 at Gonkar Palace, and six miniature illustrations for a print of Darma Rinchen's Pramāṇavārttika commentary, carved in 1449 at Ton Ganden Lhatse (thon dga' ldan lha rtse).[8]
In addition to the extensive murals at Gonkar Chode, Jackson describes a painting that Khyentse Chenmo made for Gongkarwa following a vision that patron had one evening of a Mahākāla Pañjaranātha. Gongkharwa made a quick sketch of the deity after his meditation session concluded and gave it to the artist, who used it to create a full painting. Gongkharwa used the finished painting in an initiation ceremony for his chief attendant and business manager, Gyajinpa (brgya sbyin pa), who kept the object as a talisman, after which it was held in a private estate.[9]
Khyentse's art was admired by some of the most discriminating lamas in later generations. For instance, about two and a half centuries after Khyentse's time, the highly discerning painter and patron Situ Paṇchen Chokyi Jungne (si tu paN chen chos kyi 'byung gnas 1700–1774) visited Gongkar Dorjeden and described his experience in his autobiography. He praised Khyentse Chenmo's paintings and sculptures as "suitable for being copied" (dper 'os pa), one of the highest complements Situ was known to give. After briefly describing some of the main things to see at Gongkar Dorjeden, Situ Panchen summed up his impressions of its sacred art along with the difficulties he faced in accessing it:
In brief, there were many sacred objects to see and they were well arranged. And since all the paintings and sculptures were works of Khyentsewa himself, their outstanding features of art were worthy of being taken as objects for copying. When I first visited Gongkar they looked down on me as a Khampa beggar (a jo ba) and they abused me very impolitely, not allowing me to see anything.[10]
Khyentse's other patrons in Lhokha seems to have included the Pakmodru rulers, as evidenced by Katok Situ's (kaH thog si tu, 1880–1923/25) mention of a set of twenty-three Khyenri paintings depicting the sixteen arhats that had belonged to the Pakmodru rulers of the region that were later preserved at Nedong Bentsang (sne gdong ban gtsang).[11] Khyentse Chenmo or his early successors were also esteemed and patronized by prominent lamas of the Drukpa Kagyu, Drigung Kagyu, and Nyingma traditions, and he may have created three large paintings at Dra Dingpoche (grwa ldings po che) depicting the Drukpa Kagyu lineage.
According to Katok Situ, Khyentse Chenmo was also involved in painting murals from 1473 to 1474 at the great stūpa of Dra Jampaling (grwa byams pa gling), a Geluk institution in Dranang built under the patronage of Jampalingpa Sonam Namgyel (byams pa gling pa bsod nams rnam rgyal, 1400–1475) and completed by Lotsāwa Sonam Gyatso (lo tsA ba bsod nams rgya mtsho, 1424–1482).[12] The stūpa was heavily damaged in the 1960s during the Cultural Revolution.
At Dratang (grwa thang), a Kadam and Sakya monastery, he also produced a set of extant gilt-copper sculptures, which were transferred to Mindroling (smin grol gling) in the 1990s. Only one of the sculptures he created for Gonkhar Chode survived, a life-sized portrait of Kunga Namgyel.[13] Jackson identifies other sculptures surviving in the Potala (po ta la).
In the 1470s Khyentse Chenmo was commissioned by the translator Trimkhang Lotsāwa Sonam Gyatso (khrims khang lo tsA ba bsod nams rgya mtsho, 1424–1482) to paint a portrait of his teacher, Vanaratna (c.1384–1468). This painting, in the Kronos Collection, may be the portrait Khyentse made. The Indian master, who spent his later decades in Tibet, is depicted in a pose in which he appeared to Trimkhang Lotsāwa in a dream, his right hand in the teaching mudrā and his left hand holding a copy of the Mañjuśrīnāmasaṃgitī. Although structurally more akin to the Beri style, the painting is replete with animals and decorative elements that became hallmarks of the Khyenri style.
According to Jackson, Khyentse Chenmo's last known project was in 1503, although if Tsechang Penba Wangdu is correct, this project would most likely have been completed by a student of Khyentse's. This was a commission by the Fourth Zhamar, Chokyi Drakpa (zhwa dmar 04 chos grags ye shes, 1453–1524) to paint the murals of Zhamar's seat, Yangpachen Monastery (G198 yangs pa can), that was under construction at the time. The Second Pawo, Tsuklak Trengwa (dpa' bo 02 gtsug lag phreng ba, 1504–1566), in his history of the Karma Kagyu tradition, noted that Mentang Chenmo was also brought to the monastery for the project. Jackson tentatively identifies a portrait of an unnamed Zhamar now in the collection of the Musée national des arts asiatiques-Guimet, Paris (MA1638), as the Fourth Zhamar, possibly made by Khyentse Chenmo himself.[14]
Jamgon Kongtrul ('jam mgon kong sprul, 1813–1899) suggested that Khyentse Chenmo composed a manual on religious art or iconography, but he did not give its title, and no known manual by Khyentse survives. Khyentse is also known to have composed a eulogy of Gonkarwa entitled Wonderful Vine (ngo mtshar 'khri shing) but this too does not survive.[15]
None of Khyentse's direct disciples are named in sources. His chief student and main assistant appears to have been a nephew.
Khyentse Chenmo died either in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century.
Notes:
[1] Tsechang Penba Wangdu, p. 8; Jackson 2016, p. 3.
[2] Jackson 2016, p. 3; Fermer, pp. 39–40.
[3] Jackson 2016, pp. 4–6; Jackson 1996, 108; Fermer, p. 39.
[4] Tsechang Penba Wangdu, p. 9.
[5] Jackson, pp. 13–14.
[6] Jackson 2016, p. 22.
[7] Jackson 2016, p.14; 43, image 2.3. HAR 31346
[8] Fermer, Losal Dondup, and Jampal Gawa, p. 42.
[9] Jackson 2016, pp. 19–20
[10] Jackson 2016, p. 13.
[11] Jackson 2016, p. 14.
[12] Jackson 2016, pp. 20–21.
[13] Jackson 2017, p. 173, note 3.
[14] Jackson 2016, p. 18.
[15] Jackson 2016, p. 21.
Alexander Gardner is Director and Chief Editor of the Treasury of Lives. He completed his PhD in Buddhist Studies at the University of Michigan in 2007. He is the author of The Life of Jamgon Kongtrul The Great. Published January 2024. (Extracted from the Treasury of Lives, July 2024).
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Luo Wenhua罗文华and Gesang Qupei格桑曲培. 2015.Gongga Qudesi bihua: Zangchuan fojiao meishu shi de licheng bei贡嘎曲德寺壁画:藏传佛教美术史的里程碑. Beijing: Gugong chubanshe.
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Tsechang Penba Wangdu. 2012. "A Study of mKhyen brtse chen mo dge bsnyen rnam rgyal, his mural paintings at Gong dkar chos sde and the mKhyen lugs school of Tibetan painting." In The Arts of Tibetan Painting: Recent Research on Manuscripts, Murals and Thangkas of Tibet, the Himalayas and Mongolia (11th–19th century). Proceedings of the Twelfth Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies [IATS], Vancouver, 2010. Asian Art. https://www.asianart.com/articles/wangdu/. (This is a translation of Brtse byang spen pa dbang 'dus 2010).
Tsechang Penba Wangdu, translated by Tenzin Gelek. 2023. "Murals of Gongkar Chode: Reexamining Khyentse Chenmo and His Painting Tradition." In Project Himalayan Art, Rubin Museum of Art. http://rubinmuseum.org/projecthimalayanart/essays/murals-of-gongkar-chode.
