Pillars in the Recessed Portico in the Roya Gopuram with the Base of One of the Four Sculptured Monoliths, Madura
Linnaeus Tripe British
Not on view
Tripe was a career military officer in India and Government Photographer to the Madras Presidency in the late 1850s. In early 1858 he made an ambitious and difficult tour of India's southern districts in order to create for the government a record of the region's antiquities, scenes of historic importance, and natural phenomena. The subject of this remarkably well-preserved print from a large paper negative is the figurative details carved into the pillars on the gateway of the Meenakshi Sundareshvara temple in Madurai, a city in southern India and an important Hindu pilgrimage site. Tripe noted in his published caption that although the gopuram, or tower, dedicated to Shiva and his consort Meenakshi was unfinished, it was "in no way surpassed in elegance of design and proportion and delicacy of carving." The photograph is from Part I of Photographic Views in Madura (1858).
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