Discovering Tibet: The Tucci Expeditions and Tibetan Paintings

The explorations of Giuseppe Tucci, the founder of modern Tibetanology, as reflected in period photographs and masterpieces of Tibetan painting from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries. Tibetan culture and artistic tradition were virtually unknown in the West until the eight major expeditions led by Giuseppe Tucci between 1926 and 1948. This catalog retraces his travels through period photographs and his contributions to the study of Tibetan art. In addition to Tucci’s photographs, it presents a collection of paintings from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries, enabling readers to discover Tibetan art with particular reference to compositional style, iconography, and the reading of a tangka.