Vaishnava Devotee with Two Women
1890
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1890
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Vaishnava Devotee with Two Women is a 1890 unspecified by Unknown, a Patna School of Painting work, depicting Bengal, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a man in fancy shoes standing between two women, all against a flat yellow background. He wears the forehead marks of a Vishnu devotee, but his clothes look too stylish for a holy man. Kalighat artists in 1800s Kolkata often poked fun at fake holy men who used religion to impress women. The red hands might be henna—more fashion than faith. To see more of these sharp, simple scenes, look up the subject kalighat.
Here a devotee of Vishnu is wearing shoes and is depicted with some irony as being a fashionable devotee, or perhaps merely posing as orthodox. Kalighat artists often targeted hypocritical Vaishnava mendicants whose intentions with unsuspecting women were far from innocent. On his forehead one finds sectarian marks worn by worshippers of Vishnu. The man’s right hand and one of the women’s left hands, both held aloft, are colored red, possibly to indicate that they were adorned with henna.
Read the full account in the museum source.
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