This truly extraordinary miniature thangka would have been commissioned by a wealthy patron. Replete with very, very fine imagery and lavished with brilliant pigments and burnished gold, it depicts an image of Vajrapani, the wrathful deity standing amid roiling flames, his right hand in the gesture of warning brandishing his symbol, the vajra, his left again in tarjani mudra. He is surrounded by sentient beings - animals of the charnel grounds, of the fields and the forests, while below him riding on their vehicles are the Dam Can brothers Dam Can Vajrasadhu riding a lion and crushing corpses, and Dam Can Dorje Legspa on his goat with the twisted horns. Between them, a crawling skeleton holds aloft a double offering of skull cups filled with offered organs. The reverse with tiny blessings in gold Tibetan script behind each of the deities.