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context: painting > early painting > buddhist painting
Shingon mandala
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an early Shingon mandala, the Womb mandala |
The Shingon sect was highly esoteric, with a detailed and partly secret cosmology of great complexity. Some of their ideas were expressed in mandalas (sadly for those of us annoyed by cliched comedy of accents, Japanized to mandaras), models of the cosmic order. Contemplating these diagrammatic paintings was a way towards Buddhahood.
The style is straight out of Tibet - you won't find much colouring in Japanese art history much like this, with its bold and rather simpleminded contrasts. Its scheme makes it look rather like a carpet, I think...