About Taenghwa

T'aenghwa is a characteristic type of Korean Buddhist visual art. A genre of Buddhist art, the paintings of icons can be on hanging scrolls, or framed pictures, or wall-paintings. T'aenghwa may be small, private and made for indoor display, or large and made for outdoor display. The craft is considered an extension of an earlier tradition of mural painting. There are no manuals that describe t'aenghwa painting, instead, the tradition preserves its models through paper stencils. Though most of the Koryo era t'aenghwa are held in Japanese collections, museums in Berlin, Boston, and Cologne carry some as well.