Goddess standing on a mountaintop (c. 1720): Art, History and Details

Goddess standing on a mountaintop (c. 1720) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The four-armed goddess, whose name remains unknown, presides over a scene of carnage. Two dark-skinned women offer halved heads full of blood. A buffalo that stands for her devotees’ enemies has been sacrificed. Jackals and birds of prey cheerfully take away shares of flesh. An important aspect of religious practice in the northwest Himalayas, the worship of fierce goddesses was thought to aid their devotees in conquering enemies, psychological and otherwise. She wears the enemies as corpses in her ears and as a garland around her neck.

Object facts

• Title: Goddess standing on a mountaintop
• Date: c. 1720
• Culture: Northern India, Pahari kingdoms
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Page: 28.1 x 18.4 cm (11 1/16 x 7 1/4 in.); Image: 24.9 x 15.3 cm (9 13/16 x 6 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 2018.98

A detail from the museum

The Goddess is wearing a garland of corpses.

Collection credit

Purchase and partial gift from the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection; Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Griswold, William, Cameron Kitchin, Chase F. Robinson, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cincinnati Art Museum, and National Museum of Asian Art (Smithsonian Institution). Pahari Paintings: Art and Stories, edited by Sonya Rhie Mace, Sarang Sharma, and Vijay Sharma. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2026.

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.