Bracket with Two Musicians (100s CE): Art, History and Details

Bracket with Two Musicians (100s CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This vaulted bracket, with acanthus leaves on the side, is decorated with a musician-couple who stand on a lotus pedestal. Both figures wear heavily draped robes that consist of two garments: an outer one—like the classical Greek himation—and the inner one, ankle length on the male and floor length on the female. The man's head is covered with a cap or a hood, while the young woman wears her hair pulled into a chignon and decorated with a garland. She also wears heavy earrings. The bracket or corbel of this type, originally probably placed fairly high, seems to be a particularly appropriate component for being decorated with celestial, heavenly musicians. The style is quite characteristic for the Swat area, particularly around Butkara, where Domenico Faccenna conducted extensive archaeological excavations. A number of comparable pieces, including voluted brackets, are decorated with acanthus leaves and figures of diverse types, some of which are celestial musicians who hold the same instruments. The facial types represented here are almost identical to some of the figures from Butkara.

Object facts

• Title: Bracket with Two Musicians
• Date: 100s CE
• Culture: Pakistan, Gandhara, probably Butkara in Swat, Kushan period
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: schist
• Dimensions: Overall: 37.5 cm (14 3/4 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art - Kushan, Gandhara
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1980.15

A detail from the museum

The bearded man plays a lute-like instrument, while his companion holds a clapper-type percussion instrument similar to the kartal still used in parts of India today.

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1980." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 68, no. 6 (1981): 163-219.
• Czuma, Stanislaw J., and Rekha Morris. Kushan Sculpture: Images from Early India. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1985.
• Kurita, Isao 栗田功. Gandhāran art [ガンダ-ラ美術 = Gandāra bijutsu]. Vol. 2. The world of the Buddha [佛陀の世界 = Budda no sekai]. Tōkyō: Nigensha, 1988.

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.