Kalachakra and his Core Assembly

From a set of Twenty-seven Tutelary Deities of the Karma Kagyu School designed by Situ Panchen Chokyi Jungne (1699-1774), this painting shows the tutelary deity Kalachakra and his assembly from the innermost palace of his mandala. Many of the deities depicted in this set were regularly propitiated in the monastic rituals of Palpung, and in 1918 Kathok Situ recorded seeing copies of this set at a monastery in Lhatok district of western Kham, calling them “tantric paintings following the Palpung model.”