Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara

Among the icons and altar panels of a European gallery, this painting on silk comes from a different world. It shows Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, known in Tibet as Chenrezig, a figure said to have put off his own enlightenment until every other being could be freed from suffering. One story explains his strange forms. Faced with the sheer scale of the world's pain, his head is said to have split apart in grief, and the Buddha Amitabha remade him with many heads to hear every cry and many arms to reach every sufferer at once, an eye set in each open palm. The lotus he holds stands for compassion opening even in the middle of suffering. A scroll painting like this, made around 1850, was not meant for a wall but to be unrolled for meditation and rolled up again.