Female Devotee (c. early 100s CE): Art, History and Details

Female Devotee (c. early 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 female devotee is depicted approaching the place of worship carrying a covered wicker tray that would have been filled with fresh flower garlands.The sense of dynamism and power in the stance, the masterful transformation of stone into the suppleness of youthful, voluptuous flesh barely interrupted by clothing, as well as touches of naturalism—seen in the slipping of the large bangle down the spiral cuff—are all stylistic characteristics of female figures made during the early 2nd century.

Object facts

• Title: Female Devotee
• Date: c. early 100s CE
• Culture: India, Mathura, Kushan period
• Type: Stone
• Technique: sandstone
• Dimensions: Overall: 74.5 x 30 x 15 cm (29 5/16 x 11 13/16 x 5 7/8 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art - Kushan, Mathura
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 2012.19

Collection credit

Bequest of Jeptha H. Wade III in honor of Emily V. Wade

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art : The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. Vol. 53 no. 02, March/April 2013
• “Art of Asia Acquired by North American Museums, 2011-2012.” Archives of Asian Art, vol. 63, no. 2, 2013, pp. 215–276
• Cleveland Museum of Art. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014.

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.