Tibet / China · Painting / Religious Craft
ཐང་ཀ (Thangka) — མེན་རི (Menri school)
The Menri (མེན་རི) school is the canonical Lhasa court thangka painting tradition — the most systematized of Tibet's painting lineages, codified by Menthangpa Menla Dhondup in the 15th century and maintained as the official style of the Ganden Phodrang government. The Menri school is distinct from Bhutanese lhazo (CRAFT-0533), Newar paubha (CRAFT-0543), and Patan thangka (CRAFT-0554) in three specific technical elements: its characteristic cool palette (where Patan school uses warm amber, Menri uses a cooler blue-green ground); its iconometric system (the most mathematically rigorous in Buddhist painting — every proportion of every deity derived from a single foundational unit called the 'sor'); and the transmission requirement: a Menri painter must receive empowerment from a qualified lineage holder before painting specific deity categories. The sor unit — the width of the deity's finger — is established at the beginning of each painting and everything else derives from it.
Risk level: Critically Endangered · China National ICH List (Repkong arts, 2006); UNESCO Representative List (Repkong Arts, 2009)
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