Nude Male Torso

Location/Period: Harappa/ Indus Valley Civilization

Subject: Nude male torso

Material:Red Sandstone

Style:Organic

Function: It shows intelligent study of the human body, what it looks like and how it works, and that study has been appropriately expressed in the material.

The Beautiful Bodhisattva Padmapani

Location/Period: Wall painting at Cave I, Ajanta/ 5th century (120)

Subject: Padmapani holding blue lotus

Style: noble type figure, not all Ajanta figures are noble types (merchants)

Material: Painting on cave

Function: head with downcast eyes express the compassion and humility which are the great achievement of Buddhist art

Distinct highlight on nose and brow

Chatiya Hall, Cave 26

Location/Period: Gupta Period , Late 5th century

Subject:
Style:
Material:
Function:

Description:

• Rock-carved temple
• Contains relics of Buddhist monks, monks circumambulate stupa,
• No Buddha images, very little designs on pillars,
• Beams on ceiling imitate wood

Boar Avatar of Vishnu

Location/Period: Udayagiri, Cave 5/ Gupta Period, 5th c.

Subject: Vishnu
Style:
Material:Stone
Function: to convey that Vishnu triumphs over the evil demon Naga

Description:

• Boar rescuing the Goddess of the Earth from Naga, the witnesses are rigid rows of small deities,
• Naga (an evil demon symbolic of water) with gesture of veneration, woman with wide hips, small waist, and full bust,

Shiva and Parvati on Mt. Kailasha

Location/Period: Ellora/

Subject: Siva and Parvarti
Style: Gupta style, geometric
Material: stone
Function: Tells the story of Siva: Ravanda challenges the power of Siva by shaking the Kailasha Mountain
[Ravanda: multiple arms and faces (symbolizes power); evil king]. Siva, accompanied by Parvarti (considered very beautiful in Hindu art) seems very relaxed and simply defeats Ravanda

> demonstration of the power of Siva

Shiva Maheshvara [Shiva as Great Lord]

Location/Period: Elephanta/ 7th century

Subject: Siva with three faces (Siva in his threefold aspect as Mahesha); calm; thick lips, straight nose, downcast eyes, three wrinkles on neck, very detailed decorations on head dresses

    Left Face: Aghora, the wrathful one
    Center face: Tatpurusha, beneficent and serene
    Right Face: Uma Devi, Uma the Blissful one; Siva’s consort                             (represents the very height of femininity)

Style: Gupta Period (?)
Material: Stone
Function:to worship the god Shiva (?)

Buddhist Triad

Location/Period: Gandhara region/ Kushan Period

Subject:Shakyamuni Buddha and his two disciples
Style: Greco-Roman style: classical style drape, wavy hair on Ushinisha, downcast eyes, straight nose, full lips
Material:Grey stone
Function: gods represented in human form

Description:
The central figure is Shakyamuni preaching as symbolized by the gesture of his hands.  To his right and left, respectively, stand the bodhisattvas Maitreya (who will become Buddha in the future) and Avalokiteshvara.  In the background, witnesses to the preaching, are the Hindu deities Brahma and Indra.  The Buddha’s head is Apoll-like and his eyes are half closed, presaging the lowered glance customary in later images.  In the flowering tree we see an exuberant display of virtuoso undercut stonework.

Standing Bodhisattva

Location/Period: Gandhara region/ Kushan Period, 2nd century

Subject: Boddhisattva
Style: Stucco - plastic and fluid
Material: stone
Function: (?)

Seated Buddha with Attendants

Location/Period: Mathura region/ Kushan Period,

Subject:Buddha and attendants
Style: Organic and Naturalistic; Mathura style: stylized drapery on clothing, stylized ushnisha, simplistic halo, wide open eyes, and sligght smile on lips
Material: Red sandstone
Function: Kushan Period first period to have representation of Buddha, but Buddha image not yet fully developed (hair)

Description:

2 unidentified figures beside Buddha, Buddha making mudra to signify which sutra is being taught, 2 flying angels above Buddha, lions to symbolize Buddha on base of pedestal

Portrait of Kanishka

Location/Period: Mathura/ C. 120

Subject: King Kanishka
Style: un-Indian; stark, geometric, and abstract style
Material: Red sandstone.
Function: ()

?

Description:

This portrayed King Kanishka.  They wore padded boots and a heavy cloak covering the whole body.  The line of the cloak is drawn as if laid out with a straightedge, and the repeat patterns of the long mace and the cloak edge are stongly emphasized.

Great Chaitya Hall

Location/Period: Karle/ Andhra Period, 2nd century

Subject:
Style:
Material:
Function: to serve as a temple and a place for worship > Circumabulation

The Great Stupa at Sanchi

Location/Period: Sanchi/ Shunga and early Andhra Period, 3rd century b.c.e. to 1st century c.e.

Subject: Stupa
Style: (?)
Material: Stone
Function: a place of worship and to pray > Circumambulation

• Stylized lining around dome
• Yasti at top, symbolizing the central axis of the universe
• Jatakas: stone relief carvings on railing with various stories of Buddha's life
• Relics of Buddha inside
• Stupa used for circumambulation to pay respect

Dream of Queen Maya

Subject: Queen Maya and the white elephant
Style: (?)
Material: Sandstone
Function: serves as a jataka: tales of the previous incarnations of Buddha

Description:
Queen Maya, the mother of the Buddha, dreams of a white elephant, symbolic of the coming of the Buddha to her womb. The scene, with its tilted perspective and the seated attendants seen from behind, is stiffly represented, simplified in a manner not like stone carving bit like carved wood.

Torana and Bracket Figure

Location/Period: The Great Stupa at Sanchi/ Early Andhra Period

Subject: the fertility goddess
Style: (?)
Material: stone
Function: decorative; architectural bracket

Description:
“On Buddhist monuments the supportive function of yajshas and yakshis was primarily religious, not architectural. The great mass of illiterate people who but dimly understood the teachings of the Buddha could be comforted when they saw the local tutelary deities, male and female, welcoming them to the austere and abstract stupa”

Mithuna Couples

Location/Period: Karle, Great Chaitya Hall/ Early 2nd century

Subjects: “donors/nobility;” couple

Style: same as the Great Chaitya Hall; realistic & organic
Material: Stone
Function: (?) couple represent auspiciousness (promising success; propitious; opportune)

Description:

…Masculinity of the man – broad shoulders and chest, narrow hips, virile stance – and equally so of the femininity of the woman, with her large breasts and hips and small waist. At Karle we have, perhaps for the first time, the perfectly controlled expression of this Indian ideal and the masterly representation of male and female figures that continues almost without fail up to the tenth and eleventh centuries.

Seldom in history of art have male and female forms been conceived on so large and abundant a scale, with sheet phsical health seeming to brim from them in an ever-flowing stream. The quality of prana, or breath, which we must mention now and again in connection with Indian sculture, is obviously present in these figures... (94)

Chauri Bearer

Location/Period: Didarganj/ Maurya Period

Subject: Chauri Bearer
Material: Polished sandstone,
Style: Figural style
Function:  It shows intelligent study of the human body, what it looks like and how it works, and that study has been appropriately expressed in the material; shows worship of female nature divinity; emphasizes fertility

Description:
The tremendous development of the breasts, the small waist, and the large hips show one of the fundamental Indian representational modes.  The female form must suggest its functions of life-bearing, life giving, and loving.  She holds the ceremonial whisk (chauri) that identifies her as an attendant to some eminent personage.  It’s naturalistic and highly polished surface.  It has a courtly expression of Maurya.

> Free standing-can see sculpture all around , not just front

Lion Capital

Location/Period: Sarnath/ Maurya Period

Subject: 4 lion
Style: Smooth aristocratic style

Material: Polished Chunar sandstone

Function: to represent Buddha.  To commemorate his conversion and to expand the teaching of the faith he ordered many stone memorial columns

Description:

The lion is the symbol of royalty, and the Buddha, described in the texts as the lion of the Shakya clan, was himself of royal blood.  The wheels on the frieze are symbols of the Buddha’s Law, and later representations of the Buddha show his hands In the motion of teaching, or turning the Wheel, symbolic of his preaching the Sermon at Sarnath, where he “set the Wheel of the Law in motion.”
The Sarnath capital is bell-shaped and surmounted by a frieze with four animals and four wheels in relief which, in turn, is surmounted by four lions back to back.  Lotus flower base.  Lotus displays purity.  This is part of the iconic period where there weren’t any direct representation of the budda.

Lions represent Ashoka himself.  The roar of lion represents preaching shakamuni Buddhism.  The four lions preach in all directions.

The horse represents the sun god who travels across the sky in a chariot.
The elephant was the vehicle of Indra.   The animals on the base represent such non-Buddhist deities at the service of the Buddha.

Siva, Square Stamp seal

Location/Period: Mohenjo -daro, Indus Valley Civilization

Subject: Siva with many bangles and a typical yoga pose
Style: The Indus carver tended to obliterate the evidence of technique I order to achieve a stylized but naturalistic effect.  There is a sleek outines and vry few traces of tool or technique.
Material: white steatite
Function: script of the seals shows the writing system existence on the Indus Civilization.  The seated figure must have been important to the people to place on a seal stamp.

Iconography: visual representation

High Priest

Location/Period: Mohenjo-daro, Indus Valley Civilization.

Subject: Priest
Material: Limestone
Function: to honor somebody important
Style: Formal (realistic)

Description:

The figure, a formal, dignified sculptural achievement, calls to mind a deity, priest, or important official, and is therefore referred to as “high priest.”  It is a formal and hieratic sculpture. It has the downcast eyes, thick lips, and straight nose no how Indian people look present to Indian people of the region.

Standing Buddha

Location/Period:Mathura/Gupta Period, early 5th century

Subject: Buddha

Style: Kushan geometry, Gupta style

Matieral: Red sandstone
Function: display the artistic expression of Buddhism in India

Description:

It has wide shoulders, a swelling chest, and a rigid frontality.  The crisply geometric Kushan style is also evident eyelids, eyebrows, mouth, and neck lines, which are not curves but carefully controlled geometric arcs that seem almost to have been laid out with a compass.  There’s a roundness and softness of modeling of the face and neck.  The downcast eyes, so important for the concept of the image, may welll derive from Gandharan art; the supple and quiescent smoothness of the body surely owes much to the indigenous organic tradition.

The First Sermon

Location/Period: Sarnath/Gupta Period

Material: Chunar sandstone
Subject: the Buddha
Style: Organic; Combination of Mathua and Gandhara styles: round face, downcast eyes, stylized hair, and ushinisha
Function:represents the Buddha setting in motion the Wheel of the Law with his First Sermon in the Deer Parl at Sarnath

> Hand position indicates sutra

Iconic function

Parashurameshvara Temple

Location/Period: Orissa/ca. 700 c.e

Subject:

Style: Hindu architecture, Northern style with porch in front, tower behind with many layers, beehive shaped with an amalaka on top

Material:

Function: Hindu temple, poor and rich give money for commision

Description:

It shows a primitive stage in the northern  medieval style, for here the separation of the porch, or mandapa, form the tower is cleary marked; the former is a horizontal slab structure, whereas the tower is a primarily vertical structure ov er the shrine.  There is no transition from the mandapa to the skihara.  The shikhara on this early temple at Bhubaneshwar is still composed of strongly horizontal layers, and appears rectangular in plan, like a primitive cell-shrine.  But the incrustation of the surfaces with numerous small carvings tends to break down its architectrual characer and to convert it into a work of scupture.

• Shiva with multiple arms, depiction of devotees,
• Function:
  
• Very stylistic and geometric carvings

Brihadeshvara Temple

Location/Period: Thanjavur, 11th c. (248)

Style: Southern style temple:

a.  More complex architecture

b.  Tower is very large

c.   Hindu deities on exterior walls

Function: “Temple of the Great Lord” i.e. Shiva > worships the god Shiva

This extraordinary monument was a combined fort and temple, with elaborate battlements and a surrounding moat.

.A general view of the Bridheshvara, with the separate Nandi porch in the foreground, reveals that although the tower has developed into a very high structure, its general effect is still angular

> strongly influenced by Gupta Style

> has multiple images of Siva

Shiva Nataraja

Location/Period: Parashurameshvara Temple, Bhubneshwar/ 7th c.

Subject: Shiva

Style: Gupta Style: eyes are downcast; thick lips; more serene
Material: Sandstone

Function: (?)

Allegorical representation of the Emperor Jahangir seated on an Hourglass Throne

Location/Period: Mughal, school  of Jahangir, Early 17th century.

Subject: Emperor Jahangar

Style: Very realistic, renaissance:overlap for sense of depth, Iranian miniature painting > perspective

Material: color and gold on paper

Function:  art of portraiture was one of the great contributions of the Mughal school to Indian painting , and the revelation of character in individual faces can be seen

• Each face thoughtfully studied and reveals person, aged and wise or aged and sterile, youthful and worried or unaware

Description:

• Jahangir seated on a jeweled hourglass throne surrounded by a magnificent halo of sun and moon and receiving under his imperial aegis a Muslim divine, a Muslim prince, a European delegate, and an artist
• emperor Akbar’s home
• European Renaissance influence
• Bottom left depiction of artist, Eorupean and Muslim man depicted, very soft spacial features and tones, halo around
   Emperor Jahangir, apsaras above halo