On loan to The Met The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Vajravarahi
Vajravarahi dances wildly atop a corpse and holds a skull cup and khatvanga staff. She wears elaborate jewelry, highlighted with turquoise, and a garland of severed heads. Behind her crown is her defining visual cue, a sow’s head, drawn from the Hindu deity Varahi. This consort of Varaha, Vishnu’s boar incarnation, also appears as one of the seven mother goddesses (saptamatrikas). Given Chakrasamvara’s importance within Tibetan tantric practice, the emphasis on his consort as a goddess for independent veneration is significant.
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