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This chapter illustrates the shifting meanings of sacred/religious objects, in particular the recent phenomenon of sacred/religious into fine art commodities. This process, however, may lead to concerns about the new ways in which religious objects are valued. It is often suggested that this process of secularisation and commodification is a failure to respect the people who created it, and in some way presents a harm to the object itself.
According to the Oxford definition, the sacred belongs to the consecrated and the religious; to dedicated objects or purpose; and, objects or persons affiliated with a deity/god or venerated as holy.[1] The aim of this chapter is to reflect on what has made an object sacred in the past, and perhaps discover a basis to explain what makes an object sacred in today’s predominantly secular world. I have selected two religious paintings. Both mark crucial transformative events. One is drawn from Christianity, the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. The other is a Tibetan Buddhist thangka (painting) of Buddha Shakyamuni. [2] I have chosen these two images to juxtapose their sacredness and how they have changed, been re-written or appropriated over time. They are also well-known representations, requiring no introduction.[3] Numerous copies and similar illustrations are on exhibit in art museums and decorate private homes.
I argue that the meaning and value of religious objects is not rigid, but is fluid and open to modification or re-writing, irrespective of governing norms. Both the Last Supper and Buddha Shakyamuni paintings originated within a religious context but have since been appropriated into the Western fine art scene.[4] At the same time as the meaning and value of objects is re-written, however, I argue that the museum context provides a reverential context for their appreciation. These objects have been formed and shaped from physical materials, yet appear to be invested with another ‘meta’-materiality. This something is beyond the tactility of pigment, cloth, wood or bronze. It reaches across corporeal boundaries, beyond the written word and, for many people, resonates a sacredness.
Leonardo da Vinci began the Last Supper in 1495, on the refectory wall of the Sta Maria della Grazie, a Dominican convent in Milan. Leonardo’s innovation was capturing the moment when Jesus announces that someone at the table will betray him this night.[5] The revelatory moment is realistically portrayed by Leonardo, capturing a wave of emotions — such as surprise, angst, anger, sorrow, and denial. It took Leonardo twelve years to complete this masterpiece, which has since been continuously restored and reproduced. The Buddha Shakyamuni thangka is estimated to have been painted between 1050 and 1100. In this painting, the Buddha’s right hand is touching the earth, calling the earth to bear witness to his enlightenment.[6] Shakyamuni is attended by two standing bodhisattvas, the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokitesvara, and the future Buddha, Maitreya.[7] There are two seated monks above the bodhisattvas. On the top row stand seven past-Buddhas and another version of Maitreya. The five dhyana or directional Buddhas sit along the bottom.[8] This was a significant painting when it was executed and today is a highly prized item within a private Western collection.
Both paintings were commissioned. Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan, employed Leonardo to paint, sculpt and design various works, the Last Supper among them. We know the thangka was commissioned because these details are written in red Tibetan dbu med script on the back.[9] The name of the donor is not recorded. The Last Supper is large, 460 by 880 cm, and was painted directly onto a wall. The thangka is 47 by 32 centimetres and was painted on cloth, with supporting textile mountings and dowel rods at both ends. This construction permitted it to be rolled up and transported or stored.
The themes in the two paintings were not unusual. The Last Supper was created as a fresco in the dining room of a convent. The painting depicts a supper in progress — breaking bread, sharing olives and wine — an everyday practice. On a religious level, it is at this supper that Jesus initiates his disciples into the Christian ritual practice of the Holy Eucharist — the consecration of bread and wine into body and blood.[10] The thangka, on the other hand, was a stupa furnishing for the eleventh century Tibetan lama and translator Gos Lotsava.[11] A stupa is an architectural hollow bell-shaped vessel in which are placed highly valued items considered worthy to be remembrance offerings.[12] These offerings are not travelling companions on an afterlife journey such as is the Egyptian practice, but sacred objects offered in appreciation of the person now departed. Even though both these were conceived for religious spaces and depict religious scenes, only the Tibetan painting was consecrated. A lama ritually opens-the-eyes of a thangka by painting them in, thereby transforming it from a representation into a potent living deity.[13] I have not found a reference to the Last Supper being consecrated.
[1] The Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970, vol. IX, pp. 16-7.
[2] I have maintained the title spelling of the catalogue. Shakyamuni can be equally spelt without an ‘h’. Image and description of cat. No. 114 taken from Pratapaditya Pal, 2003, Himalayas An Aesthetic Adventure, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, pp. 174-5.
[3] It also means that for most readers there is no need for a visual prompt. An illustration of public familiarity is entering the names into ‘image google’. In just 15 seconds over 2000 hits were recorded for Last Supper and 2500 hits for Buddha Shakyamuni.
[4] James Clifford, 1988, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature and Art, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
[5] The betrayal passage can be found in New Testament, Mark 14:20-1.
[6] Earth-witnessing mudra (bhumisparsha) is formed by the extended fingers of the hand touching the ground. It symbolises Shakyamuni’s enlightenment under the bodhi tree. He summoned the earth goddess, Sthavara to bear witness to his attainment of enlightenment. Robert Beer, 1999, The Encyclopedia of Tibetan Symbols and Motifs, London: Serindia Publications, p.154.
[7] The Dalai Lama is said to be the earthly manifestation of Avalokitesvara.
[8] The Five Dhyani Buddhas are the heads of five Buddha families. They are Vairochana, Akshobhya, Ratnasambhava, Amitabha and Amoghasiddhi. Each represents a cardinal direction with one in the centre. They are not historical figures, like Buddha Shakyamuni, but transcendent beings. Each is associated with a colour, mudra, an animal that supports his throne, an attribute and bija (seed syllable). A good introduction is the website ‘Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on The Mandala of the Five Dhyani Buddhas’, http://www.tsl.org/Masters/buddhas/dhyani/frintroduction.html. (Viewed September 2006.)
[9] The script is in the form of dbu med (without head), which means it is less cursive than the commonly used dbu can (with head) script. The Tibetan language was adapted from Brahmi and written down at the time Buddhism was introduced into Tibet, seventh century. Dbu med first appears in the twelfth century. The stupa is bell shaped and represents the enlightened mind.
[10] In reference to taking the bread and the wine, Jesus told his twelve disciples: ‘Do this in remembrance of me’, 1 Cor 11:23-25.
[11] Gos Lotsava (c.992-1074), also known as Drogmi Lotsawa, traveled to India and, after many years of study, returned to Tibet bringing with him instructions of almost 80 major tantras, including the important Hevajra tantra. See ‘HH the Sakya Trizin Visits North America’, The Snow Lion Newsletter, http://www.snowlionpub.com/pages/N50_1.html. (Viewed September 2006,)
[12] His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (1910-1991), the head of the Tibetan Nyingmapa school, noted: ‘When a great teacher passes away, his body is no more, but to indicate that his mind is dwelling forever in an unchanging way in the dharmakaya, one will erect a stupa as a symbol of the mind of the buddhas.’ See Stupa Information Page, http://www.stupa.org.nz/. (Viewed September 2006.)
[13] ‘Ronald Knox, an Englishman who lived in Sri Lanka in the 1660s and 1670s, observed bronze foundry practices there. Before the eyes of a Buddha image are made, ‘it is not accounted a God, but a lump of ordinary metal, and thrown about the shop with no more regard than anything else… The Eyes being formed, it is thence a God.’ David Freedberg et. al., 1994, ‘The Object of Art History’, The Art Bulletin, vol. 76, no. 3, pp. 394-396 at p. 85. Furthermore, according to Robert Thurman, the Tibetans believe that the paintings and sculptures of deities are an extension of the deity. Marilyn Rhie and Robert Thurman, 1991, Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet, London: Thames and Hudson, pp. 36-37.