Celebrations of Krishna's Birth, from a Bhagavata Purana (c. 1725–30): Art, History and Details

Celebrations of Krishna's Birth, from a Bhagavata Purana (c. 1725–30) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The Hindu kingdom of Mankot in the western foothills of the Himalayas developed a bold style of painting in which figures in strict profile stand out against an intense yellow ground. Musicians enthusiastically proclaim the arrival of infant Krishna at the village of Vraj, where he was brought as a newborn to grow to maturity in safety among the cowherders. He was secreted away from the evil king Kamsa who wanted to murder the child on account of a prophecy that foretold his own death by Krishna. Krishna’s adoptive father Nanda, the village headmaster, receives tufts of grass as tokens of congratulations from a well-wisher, while a soldier salutes him.

Object facts

• Title: Celebrations of Krishna's Birth, from a Bhagavata Purana
• Date: c. 1725–30
• Culture: Northern India, Pahari kingdoms
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 22.9 x 15.2 cm (9 x 6 in.); with mat: 49 x 36.3 cm (19 5/16 x 14 5/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1988.70

Collection credit

Edward L. Whittemore Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• “The Year in Review for 1988.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 76, no. 2 (February 1989): 30–75.
• Tōyō kaiga no seika: tokubetsuten: Kurīvurando Bijutsukan no korekushon kara [東洋絵画の精華: 特别展: クリーヴラント美術館のコレクションから= Highlights of Asian painting from the Cleveland Museum of Art]. Nara, Japan: Nara National Museum, 1998.

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.