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Indian and Himalayan Art

Krishna and Radha

Made in Kishangarh, Rajasthan, India, Asia

c. 1750

Artist/maker unknown, India

Opaque watercolor and gold on cotton
40 3/4 x 37 inches (103.5 x 94 cm)

Currently not on view

1984-72-1

Purchased with the Edith H. Bell Fund, 1984

Label

This unusually large painting was not intended as an illustration for a book, yet its subject matter celebrates one of the most famous love relationships in Indian literature. Stories of Radha and Krishna take place in everyday life, thus emphasizing the physical world and physical love. Romantic love is sensually depicted here through tender gestures and huge, hooded eyes (a hallmark of Kishangarh painting). The intimacy of this romantic love is also a metaphor for the inherent union of the adoring human soul (Radha) with the divine (Krishna).

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Additional information:
  • PublicationPhiladelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections

    Composed with utmost subtlety of line and color, this unusually large painting of the Hindu god Krishna and his loved one Radha might be the work of Nihal Chand, a master of the Kishangarh school trained at the imperial court in Delhi, to whom only a few paintings can be attributed. On a white terrace, seated on a large lotus flower, a princely figure in a gesture of endearment offers a betel leaf to the lips of his beloved. Like another lotus, the man's garment envelops his seated posture; in his belt is a lotus bud, as tender as the touch of the woman's hand that rests on the floor. The sharp-featured, slender figures resemble one another; they carry the dream of each other under the eyebrows vaulting high above lowered lids that veil their emotion. Theirs is the intimacy of lovers and the stillness of icons. Stella Kramrisch, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p. 59.

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