Sacrificial Fire, from the "Tula Ram" Bhagavata Purana
1720
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1720
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Sacrificial Fire, from the "Tula Ram" Bhagavata Purana is a 1720 unspecified by Unknown, a Baroque work, depicting Surat, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a busy scene: a king on a throne, priests feeding flames, gods floating above, and flowers everywhere. The flowers aren’t just decoration. They copy the patterns on the fine cloth that was traded in the port city where this was painted. The artist turned fabric designs into painted vines and blooms. To see more paintings like this, look up the subject western india, gujarat, surat.
The evil king Kamsa organized a fire sacrifice in order to bring about the death of his brother-in-law, Vasudeva, father of the Hindu god incarnated as Krishna. The four-armed god of creation, Brahma, attends at the upper left with the sage, or holy man, Narada at the upper right. Scholars have linked the copious floral motifs throughout this dispersed series with textile patterns. This series was created in a port city, the center of flourishing international textile trade.
The sage Narada in the upper right corner plays a stringed instrument called a vina .
Read the full account in the museum source.
