A viewer unfamiliar with Tibetan Buddhist iconography, looking at this nineteenth century thangka for the first time, would likely notice the hat before anything else. The central figure wears a distinctive lotus shaped headpiece topped with a vulture feather, unlike the plainer robes and simple ushnisha of a typical buddha image nearby on the same museum wall. That hat is not decorative flourish. It is, according to the traditions surrounding this figure, a specific gift: bestowed by the King of Zahor, and worn ever after as one of Padmasambhava's defining visual markers.
Padmasambhava, known honorifically as Guru Rinpoche, occupies a role in Nyingma Buddhism roughly analogous to a founding figure, credited with carrying Vajrayana teaching into Tibet in the eighth century and, in the tradition's own telling, subduing hostile local forces to clear the way for the Dharma to take root. The Nyingma school's name itself, meaning the Ancient Ones, points back to that founding moment.
This particular painting, held today at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York under accession number F1997.12.1, surrounds the central figure with supporting cast rather than leaving him isolated: his two consorts Mandarava and Yeshe Tsogyal at his sides, deities arrayed above, and at the base the historical abbot Shantarakshita and King Trisong Detsen alongside disciples, a crowded, specific genealogy rather than a generic devotional portrait.