A Night Scene of Shiva Puja (recto)
1765
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1765
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
A Night Scene of Shiva Puja (recto) is a 1765 unspecified by Muhammad Rizavi Hindi, a Mughal Painting work, depicting Lucknow, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A woman in a golden robe kneels under a night sky, offering flowers to a stone pillar wrapped in orange paste. Tiny dishes of red and yellow powder sit beside her, and she wears the same colors on her forehead. This painting shows a Muslim artist in Lucknow painting a Hindu ritual—unusual for the time. The glow of oil lamps makes the scene feel quiet and sacred, even though the artist likely never saw the ceremony himself. To see more art from this place and time, look up Mughal India.
Under golden stars and a crescent moon, a royal woman offers a flower garland at an open-air shrine to the Hindu god Shiva. Installed on a platform under a sapling, the stone linga believed to contain Shiva’s presence bears the bright orange traces of devotional anointments. Orange kumkum (red turmeric powder) and yellow saffron are in tiny trays before her, and she has used them to mark her forehead with the signs of her piety. The small brass ewer would contain purified water to bathe the linga. On the platform are offerings of fragrant blossoms and the light of clarified butter lamps.
The linga is a stylized phallic symbol denoting the creative capacities of Shiva.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Muhammad Rizavi Hindi (b. 1700) was an Indian artist.
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