Celebrations of Krishna's Birth, from a Bhagavata Purana
1728
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1728
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Celebrations of Krishna's Birth, from a Bhagavata Purana is a 1728 unspecified by Unknown, a Baroque work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a bright yellow painting crowded with people in profile—musicians, villagers, and a baby being passed from arm to arm. The figures look flat, like cut-outs, but their faces and instruments are full of energy. This scene shows the moment Krishna, a Hindu god, is smuggled into a village as a newborn. The evil king Kamsa wants him dead, so the baby is hidden with cowherders. The bold colors and simple shapes come from a small kingdom in the Himalayan foothills, where artists worked for local rulers. To see more like this, look up northern india, pahari kingdoms.
The Hindu kingdom of Mankot in the western foothills of the Himalayas developed a bold style of painting in which figures in strict profile stand out against an intense yellow ground. Musicians enthusiastically proclaim the arrival of infant Krishna at the village of Vraj, where he was brought as a newborn to grow to maturity in safety among the cowherders. He was secreted away from the evil king Kamsa who wanted to murder the child on account of a prophecy that foretold his own death by Krishna. Krishna’s adoptive father Nanda, the village headmaster, receives tufts of grass as tokens of…
Read the full account in the museum source.
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