A Serpent Protects Vasudeva Taking His Infant Son Krishna to Safety (c. 1890): Art, History and Details

A Serpent Protects Vasudeva Taking His Infant Son Krishna to Safety (c. 1890) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In the dead of night, Krishna was born to parents who were imprisoned by his evil uncle, the usurper King Kamsa. While a goddess compelled the guards to sleep, Krishna’s father, Vasudeva, in the middle of a storm, spirited the newborn to safety in a cowherd village, where he exchanged Krishna for another infant. In the morning, Kamsa murdered the infant he thought was the child of Vasudeva, and Krishna lived to be raised by the herders.

Object facts

• Title: A Serpent Protects Vasudeva Taking His Infant Son Krishna to Safety
• Date: c. 1890
• Culture: Eastern India, Bengal, Kolkata, Kalighat
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera, graphite, ink, and tin on paper
• Dimensions: Painting only: 45 x 27.7 cm (17 11/16 x 10 7/8 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 2003.153

A detail from the museum

In the lower right, the name Vasudeva is written in the Bengali dialect as “Bashoodeva.”

Collection credit

Gift of William E. Ward in memory of his wife, Evelyn Svec Ward

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.