The Wheel of Life in Agostino Giorgi’s Alphabetum Tibetanum and Its Possible Influence on Zahari Zograf’s Mural at the Transfiguration Monastery

The Buddhist Wheel of Life (bhavacakra) circulated from Tibet to Europe through Catholic missionary scholarship, becoming part of wider intellectual and artistic exchanges between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. This study examines the depiction of the Wheel of Life in Agostino Giorgi’s Alphabetum Tibetanum (1762) and its possible influence on Zahari Zograf’s Wheel of Life mural (1849–1850) at the Transfiguration Monastery in Bulgaria. The presence of a copy of Giorgi’s engraving in Zograf’s collection raises questions concerning the transmission of Buddhist iconographic motifs and their role within Orthodox visual culture. The study employs an interdisciplinary approach combining historical, theological, and iconographical analysis with cross-religious comparison, informed by Raimon Panikkar’s concept of homeomorphic equivalence. The findings demonstrate that a historical channel of transmission between Tibet, Italy, and Bulgaria can be documented and that notable formal and compositional parallels exist between the Buddhist and Orthodox Wheels of Life. However, the available evidence is insufficient to establish direct artistic influence. Instead, the comparison shows that the two images function as homeomorphic equivalents, fulfilling analogous cosmological, moral, eschatological, and soteriological roles within different religious traditions. The case study further demonstrates how religious iconographic motifs circulated across cultural boundaries while preserving their distinct doctrinal identities.