Murals
In 1906, the German expedition team of Albert von Le Coq and Albert Grünwedel explored the Kizil Caves. While Grünwedel was primarily interested in copying the murals, von le Coq chose to remove many of the murals. Most of the fragments removed are now in Museum of Asian Art (formerly Museum für Indische Kunst) in Dahlem, Berlin. Other explorers removed some fragments of murals and may now be found in museums in Russia, Japan, Korea and United States. Although the site has been both damaged and looted, around 5000 square metres of wall paintings remained, These murals mostly depict Jataka stories, avadanas, and legends of the Buddha, and are an artistic representation in the tradition of the Theravada school of the Sarvastivadas.
According to a text found in Kucha, the paintings in some of the caves were commissioned by a Tokharian (Tbogar) king called "Mendre" with the advice of Anandavarman, a high-ranking monk. The king ordered an Indian artist, Naravahanadatta, and a Syrian artist, Priyaratna, with their disciples to paint the caves. The neighbouring Khotanese kings Vijayavardhana and Murlimin also assisted with the painting of another cave by sending artists to the site.
A notable feature of the murals in Kizil is the extensive use of blue pigments, including the precious ultramarine pigment derived from lapis lazuli from Afghanistan. In the classification of the art of the region by Ernst Waldschmidt, there are three distinct periods: the murals from the first phase are characterized by the use of reddish pigments, while those from the second phase used bluish pigments in abundance. The earlier paintings reflect more Greco-Indian or Gandharan influences, while the second ones show Iranian (Sassanian) influences. Later caves seem to have fewer legends and/or jatakas, being replaced by the repetitive designs of numerous small Buddhas (the so-called thousand Buddha motif), or sitting Buddhas with nimbuses. The paintings of the first two phases showed a lack of Chinese elements. The last phase is the Turkic-Chinese period which is centered around Turfan but in Kizil only two caves showed Tang Chinese influence.
Another characteristic of the Kizil murals is the division into diamond-shaped blocks in the vault ceilings of the main room of many caves. Buddhist scenes are depicted inside these diamond-shapes in many layers on top of one another to show the narrative sequences of the scenes.
Read more about this topic: Kizil Caves