Todi Ragini, from a Ragamala Series
1755
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1755
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Todi Ragini, from a Ragamala Series is a 1755 unspecified by Unknown, a Mughal Painting work, depicting Bengal, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A woman in a red sari sits under a tree, playing a stringed instrument while deer gather around her. The scene is bright with greens, blues, and golds, and the trees and flowers look almost too perfect to be real. This painting is part of a *Ragamala*—a series that pairs music with images. Each one matches a mood, a season, or a time of day. This one shows *Todi Ragini*, meant for late morning in spring. The artist followed styles from the Mughal court but made it their own in Bengal. To see more like this, look up 18th century Indian art.
Ragamala paintings were recognized as being associated with a season and time of day. Evoking a late morning in spring, here a young woman beguiles deer from the woodlands with her music to prevent them from destroying the crops in the field. The saturated hues and romantic idealization of the scene continue idioms begun in the Mughal court that were disseminated to regional centers of patronage such as Murshidabad. The inscription at the top of this page identifies the name, ragini todi , in Arabic script, which suggests that this ragamala series was made for a Muslim patron.
Read the full account in the museum source.
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