Credit Line:Promised Gift of Steven Kossak, The Kronos Collections
Object Number:L.2018.44.9
The god Krishna is seated with Radha, his beloved, on a low slung throne furnished with a striped bolster and covered with lotus petals. In a tender gesture, the god holds Radha’s head as she gazes demurely downward. To honor the divine couple, a row of blossoming flowers in vases is arrayed beneath their golden throne. Krishna’s lotus crown, the picture’s bright primary colors, and the rather squarish faces of the two figures recall seventeenth century court painting from the kingdom of Bundi, particularly comparable elements in the early seventeenth century frescoes decorating the Badal Mahal section of the Bundi palace. (1) (1) For the Badal Mahal frescoes, see Mira Seth, Wall Paintings of Rajasthan (New Delhi: National Museum, 2003), pp. 11824. See also Milo C. Beach, “The Masters of the Chunar Ragamala and the Hada Master” in Milo C. Beach, Eberhard Fischer, and B.N. Goswamy, eds., Masters of Indian Painting (Zürich: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 2011), Vol. I, pp. 291304 and Milo Cleveland Beach, “Wall Paintings at Bundi: Comments and a New Discovery”, Artibus Asiae, LXVIII, No. 1 (2008), pp. 10143.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Flame and the Lotus," September 20, 1984–March 3, 1985.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Divine Pleasures: Painting from India's Rajput Courts—The Kronos Collections," June 13–September 11, 2016.
Martin Lerner. The Flame and the Lotus: Indian and Southeast Asian Art from the Kronos Collections. Exh. cat. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984, pp. 178–79, cat. no. 68.
The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world.
