Frieze with Dancer and Musicians (c. 973): Art, History and Details

Frieze with Dancer and Musicians (c. 973) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

A dancer, who strikes a pose in the center, is accompanied by a full orchestra of musicians in lively variegated poses. At the far left, a woman plays the cymbals, her mouth open in song. Twisting turning postures of figures wrought in high relief with little background space behind them are characteristics of Indian sculpture from the medieval period. Music and dance were important components of devotional temple activities; they were considered as pleasing to the divinity and attractive for devotees as the works of sculpture and architecture.

Object facts

• Title: Frieze with Dancer and Musicians
• Date: c. 973
• Culture: Northwestern India, Rajasthan, Sikar, Harshagiri, 10th century
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: sandstone
• Dimensions: Overall: 33.4 x 95.3 x 11.3 cm (13 1/8 x 37 1/2 x 4 7/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1969.34

A detail from the museum

The twisting, dynamic postures of the musicians in this frieze may visually echo the joyful music they are playing together.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lerner, Martin. “Some Unpublished Sculpture from Harshagiri.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 56, no. 10 (December 1969): 354–364.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.
• Czuma, Stanislaw J., "Eternal Rhythms", Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. Vol. 36 no. 08, October 1996.

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.