Nun and Noble Female Devotee
L. T. P. Manjusri Sri Lankan
Not on view
This painting depicts two women, a nun and a voluptuous and bejeweled female devotee. The nun, with shaven head and brown dyed monastic robe, holds a bunch of white lotus in her raised hand, likely a gift from her devotee. The devotee holds an oil lamp in the nun’s honor, and a bunch of white lotus buds. The lavish adornment and fulsome physique of the laywoman suggests that she could be a celestial adorant (apsara), like those the artist studied in the early murals at Sigiriya and elsewhere in Sri Lanka. The background has Buddhist temple interior murals evoked in a grisaille-style monochromatic painting.
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