Basohli School, Punjab Hills, · c.1740–1760

KRISHNA-VISHNU SLAYING PAÑCAJANA AND OBTAINING THE PĀÑCAJANYA CONCH

USD 24,500

An illustration from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Book X, Chapter 45.

Opaque pigments heightened with gold and raised ornamental details on paper Sheet approximately 21.5 × 29 cm Painted field approximately 17 × 25 cm

Attribution note:

The painting's forcefully angular physiognomy, enlarged almond-shaped eyes, schematic anatomy, saturated palette, shallow overlapping hills, emblematic vegetation, grotesquely expressive demon and highly stylized grey-black vortex water collectively support attribution to the Basohli School in the mid-eighteenth century. Certain transitional characteristics reflect the close artistic interchange between Basohli and Guler during the period and find parallels in the artistic environment of Manaku and the Small Guler Bhāgavata Purāṇa of c.1740. The Metropolitan Museum's publication describes that project as a vast, unfinished series whose early portions were fully painted and whose sheets were approximately 22 × 31 cm, broadly comparable with the format of the present work.

Iconographic note: Previously interpreted as Matsya-Vishnu killing Ajnana/Hayagriva, the painting is here identified preferentially with Bhāgavata Purāṇa X.45.40–42, in which Krishna enters the ocean, kills the conch-form demon Pañcajana and takes the conch associated with his body. The established western Pahari tradition of depicting Matsya fighting an aquatic demon nevertheless provides an important explanation for the hybrid Vishnu-Matsya character of the deity.

Comparative context: Related stylistically to the older Basohli/Mankot pictorial tradition and to the conservative artistic environment surrounding Manaku's Small Bhāgavata Purāṇa, c.1740; distinct in scale from the Large Guler-Basohli Bhāgavata Purāṇa of c.1760–65.

Status

Available