Description: THANGKA WITH SHRI DEVI Mongolia, 18th-19th Century Ink and colours on fabric, silk frame. 13.8 x 10.2 in. The central figure of this finely painted thangka is Shri Devi Magzor Gyalmo (“the queen with the power of turning back the armies”), a deity often evocated in protective rituals, the wrathful aspect of the peaciful Sarasvati (Yang Chenma) and the first attendant of Shri Devi Paldan Lhamo, whose iconography differs from the deity here depicted because of four armies instead of two. Magzor Gyalmo is here depicted with her common attributes. She has a solar disc on the navel and a crescent moon on peacok's feathers amidst the hair; a trident in her right hand and a skull in the left one; she is swallowing a demon whose legs still dangle from her mouth; she rides a mule on a lake of blood surrounded by mountains; on the left of the mule a female attendant with a blue body and a purple makara head holding with the right hand a green snake which is the bridle of the mule; another similar attendant is on the right side of the animal. Below the deity a group of ritual objects; the four corners of the composition with four emanations of Magzor Gyalmo riding horses: Candika, Dumavati, Svayambhu Devi e Sankhapali. Magzor Gyalmo is the subject of a famous thangka dating to the mid of the 18th century in the Rubin Museum of Art, New York (R. Linrothe – J. Watt, Demonic Divine: Himalayan Art and Beyond, New York – Chicago 2005, n. 31).