Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Copy of ceiling paintings, Ajanta Cave 2
John Griffiths British
Not on view
At Ajanta, thirty Buddhist assembly halls, meditation cells, and image houses, carved from the living rock, are decorated with the most complete suite of mural paintings to survive from early India. The cave shrines, which date from the second or first century BCE to the late fifth century CE, were rediscovered in 1819, prompting two campaigns to document their wall paintings. Full-scale copies in oil were produced by the Bombay School of Art principal John Griffiths and his students; in all over 300 canvases were produced and those that survive are preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Everywhere the abundance of nature is celebrated—images of plant and animal life appear on both walls and ceilings—but nowhere does it run amok; order and logic prevail.
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