This study of local art patronage in tenth and eleventh century on the Silk Road offers a new explanation for the development of the style and iconography of well known paintings today in the British Museum, in London and the Musee Guimet, in Paris exploring the important effect of regional artistic centres on Buddhist art in Dunhuang and China.

Lilla Russell-Smith, Ph.D. (2001) in Art History, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London is an independent scholar. She has lectured and published on Dunhuang art since 1994. She co-founded the Circle of Inner Asian Art at SOAS, University of London in 1995, has been editing the Circle's publications, and is currently its Honorary Secretary. At the British Museum she coordinated the digitisation of the Stein Collection and was co-author of Catalogue of the Collection of Sir Aurel Stein in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (London and Budapest, 2002).