Images of Devotion - capriaquar.it

Foreword
Erberto Lo Bue
The selection of objects described and illustrated
in this catalogue was collected by Luca Meldoli,
who has been travelling to India, Nepal and
Tibet since 1981, taking a keen interest in the
various aspects of the religious art and culture
of those regions. It affords a glimpse on the variety
of the Himalayan and Indo-Tibetan tradition
of sculpture in terms of cultural areas, religions,
iconographies, materials and techniques
through the ages.
The first ten examples relate to the Buddhist and
Hindu Newar tradition of the Nepal Valley, whose
main artistic centre has been the town of Lalitpur,
commonly known as Patan and flourishing
well before Kathmandu came into existence. The
subsequent ten objects exemplify the Tibetan
tradition, in which Newar artists of the Nepal Valley
played an important role by introducing Indian
aesthetics into Tibet, where they were active
from the first half of the 7 th century. The last four
sculptures, a Jaina image and three Buddhist
statues, bear witness to the varied sculptural
idiom of the Indian subcontinent. By exporting
its iconography, iconometry and aesthetics to
various parts of Asia, Afghanistan to Indonesia,
from Shri Lanka to China, India played a similar
role to that played by Greece in the Mediterranean
world and beyond.
In such context, the first place has been accorded
to Nepal, which represents a bridge between
the Indian and the Tibetan world, and to works
by its sculptors, who belong to the Newar ethno-linguistic
group, and who have fashioned fine
religious images as well as ritual items for monasteries
and temples not only in their own country,
but also in Tibet, China, Mongolia, India and
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Japan, and in Buddhist centres all over the world.
The traditional Western approach to Indo-Tibetan
art is largely aesthetic, more concerned with
the dating and iconographic identification of an
image than with the motivation and purpose lying
behind its creation, namely the specific cultural
setting in which it originated. Buddhist images,
in particular, are aimed at improving one’s
karma by earning merit in view of future lives, at
removing obstacles and at creating wellbeing.
Their commissioning may be occasioned by
troubles of various kind, such as sickness and
death, as well as by the need for a specific religious
practice. Buddhist statues cannot be used
unless they have been consecrated through an
appropriate ceremony guaranteeing that they
have been fashioned correctly and filled properly
with written invocations, precious substances
and relics. In that respect ready-made images
and ritual items that have been produced and
aged artificially since the second half of the 20 th
century in order to satisfy the collectors’ demand
cannot be regarded as religious art in a traditional
sense.
Traditional artists, in particular sculptors, are
called in Tibetan “god-makers” (lha-bzo-ba,
pron. “lhazowà”) and the ability of the best ones
is sometimes celebrated in Tibetan texts and
inscriptions mentioning even their names. Their
role in the illustration and preservation of religion
has been crucial in societies that were largely
illiterate until the past century, and in which
reading was a prerogative of the clergy and ruling
classes, while writing was an ability limited
to scribes. Whichever the styles they adopted,
Indian, Newar and Tibetan sculptors have con-