1This dissertation is the first attempt at a comprehensive study of a dozen 14th-century Tibetan Buddhist monuments in the western Himalayan region of Ladakh (India) that were decorated with murals.

2Ladakh, formerly a major trading centre at the crossroads between Tibet, the Tarim Basin, the Pamir region, Kashmir and North India, stands out from the rest of the Tibetan cultural sphere for the density of its surviving Tibetan Buddhist heritage. Its history, however, remained largely obscure until the 16th century. A key monument in the political, religious and art history of Ladakh is the three-storey temple in Wanla, founded around the early 14th century by a powerful local chief devoted to the ’Bri gung bKa’ brgyud Central Tibetan school of Buddhism. It contains a very informative foundation inscription as well as an abundance of original ensembles of sculptures and murals. Building such a monument must have required the hiring of numerous skilled craftsmen, possibly from foreign regions. According to the temple’s foundation inscription, several more constructions were to follow. As a matter of fact, the same network of patrons and painters appears to have been responsible for sponsoring and painting a number of temples and gateway-stupas extending from the area of Wanla to the Ladakh border. Compared to the so-called ‘Alchi group of monuments’, named after the famous three-storey temple in Alchi (early 13th century), these monuments mark a clear shift from Kashmiri- to Central Tibetan-derived art. They make up what may be called the ‘Wanla group of monuments’.

3This dissertation is based on extensive photographic documentation of ancient monuments of Ladakh acquired during annual field trips from 2010 to 2017. It examines the connections between the monuments of the Wanla group from a multidisciplinary perspective. The murals of these monuments are systematically examined for their style and iconography in order to identify the hands and iconographic repertoires of their respective painters, and their unpublished inscriptions are edited and translated. Aided by numerous comparisons with about twenty side-monuments and an extensive radiocarbon measurement project, the dissertation aims to establish as clear a chronology as possible for the monuments of the Wanla group, thereby contributing to our current knowledge of the history of Ladakh from the 13th to the 15th century.

4The dissertation comprises a text volume in English with a full abstract in French (565 p); a volume of illustrations including photographs, maps and drawings to accompany the text (431 p); a corpus volume that systematically presents each monument of the corpus (348 p); and an appendix volume including short essays, diagrams and tables related to the subject (115 p).