On Thangka Painting at the Khurul

The Central Khurul of Kalmykia “The Golden Abode of Buddha Shakyamuni” has long become a center of attraction not only for pilgrims from all over Russia, but also for painters, both renowned and aspiring. This past weekend was no exception — students of art schools from the Volgograd region and Kalmykia came to admire the beauty of our khurul and to try to depict it on paper. The pupils of the G. O. Rokchinsky Art School in Elista were told about the secrets of thangka painting. The aspiring artists learned that iconometry means “the measurement of images”; this discipline determines the measure of the bodies and the system of proportions, while iconography determines the themes, subjects, and composition of the works, as well as the symbols and attributes corresponding to various figures or entire groups of the pantheon.