Goddess Sarasvati

West Bengal, Calcutta

Not on view

The goddess of learning, music and the arts is readily identified by the golden vina she rests on her shoulder and the bundle of palm-leaf books with their wooden covers and colored binding cords that she holds on her knee. As described in the iconographic sources, she has a white complexion and wears a gold-trimmed white sari, sits upon a white lotus that rises from a lotus pond. She rests one foot on her celestial vehicle, the white swan, the other on a white lotus foot-rest. The landscape setting combines lush forest with a palm tree and icy mountain ranges beyond, the latter alluding to Shiva’s abode.

Goddess Sarasvati, Lithograph, printed in black and hand-coloring with watercolor and selectively applied glaze, West Bengal, Calcutta

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