Thangka Painting – Menri School

Thangka is a painting form unique to Tibetan Buddhism, dating to the Tubo Kingdom of the seventh century; its scroll format made it easy for nomads to carry and venerate. The Menri school was founded by the 15th-century painter Menla Döndrup, renowned for delicate lines, refined colours and rigorous figure-drawing—the dominant school in central Tibet and the Lhasa area.

Thangkas are painted on cotton or silk primed and polished with chalk, then outlined in ink, filled in with natural mineral pigments—turquoise blue, cinnabar red, orpiment gold—and finished with fine gold lines; a fine thangka may take months or even years to complete.

Inscribed in 2006 on the first national ICH list under the collective entry 'Thangka,' covering multiple schools, it is an indispensable primary source for Tibetan Buddhist devotion, art history and religious iconography, and the visual heart of temple and lay religious life in Lhasa.

Barkhor Street and its surroundings host a concentration of thangka workshops and painters; the major monasteries—Jokhang, Drepung, Sera—hold large historical collections, making them the prime places to see and learn about thangka.