2 Sept 2026
Jörg Heimbel and Yannick Laurent presented at the Ninth International Conference on Tibetan Archaeology and Art (ICTAA9), held in Chengdu, China, from 31 August to 2 September 2026.
Jörg Heimbel and Yannick Laurent presented at the Ninth International Conference on Tibetan Archaeology and Art (ICTAA9), held in Chengdu, China, from 31 August to 2 September 2026.
Their papers explored how philological approaches can contribute to the study of Tibetan and Himalayan art. Jörg Heimbel combined literary, epigraphical, and visual evidence to reconstruct a previously unknown painting set commissioned by Ame Zhap (1597–1659), the 27th throne-holder of Sakya, while Yannick Laurent drew on inscriptions, biographical sources, and art-historical analysis to trace the ritual lives of two portrait sculptures of the 4th Panchen Lama (1570–1662) preserved in the Capital Museum, Beijing.
Together, the presentations demonstrated how philological research can bring texts, inscriptions, images, and material objects into dialogue to recover the historical, ritual, and cultural contexts of Buddhist artworks.
