Milarepa, the One Who Harkened 1925

Nicholas Roerich painted ‘Milarepa, the One Who Harkened’ using tempera on canvas. At the forefront, we see Milarepa, the Tibetan Buddhist mystic, seated in the lotus position. This posture, ubiquitous across Buddhist art, symbolizes purity, love, and spiritual awakening. He is set against an imposing backdrop of sharply angled mountains that stretch into the distance. The mountains are rendered in blues and whites, evoking both the physical grandeur and the spiritual transcendence. In many cultures, the upward direction of mountains makes them important as symbolic representations of spiritual ascent, the path of transcendence, and the bridge between the earthly and the divine. The motif of the mountain has persisted through time in different religions and mythical traditions as sacred places. The emotional weight of the image lies in this intersection of the symbolic and real. Just as the mountain serves as a link between the earth and the divine, so does the image serve to stir a deep-seated longing for something more in the viewer.