Baby Krishna Asking for Butter from Yashoda, from a Kalighat album (c. 1890): Art, History and Details

Baby Krishna Asking for Butter from Yashoda, from a Kalighat album (c. 1890) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

As the incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu, whose followers recognize as the deity who creates and destroys the universe, Krishna was always eating. Like time itself, which ultimately consumes everything, Krishna eats so much his foster mother Yashoda cannot believe it. When she looks in his mouth, she sees the cosmos and realizes he is not an ordinary baby.

Object facts

• Title: Baby Krishna Asking for Butter from Yashoda, from a Kalighat album
• Date: c. 1890
• Culture: Eastern India, Kolkata, Kalighat
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera, graphite, ink, and tin on paper
• Dimensions: Secondary Support: 48 x 30 cm (18 7/8 x 11 13/16 in.); Painting only: 45.7 x 28 cm (18 x 11 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 2003.112

A detail from the museum

Kalighat artists made metallic pigment out of tin to look like silver.

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.