Karttikeya, Commander of the Divine Army, Seated on a Peacock (Ganga Period, about 12th century): Artwork and History

Karttikeya, Commander of the Divine Army, Seated on a Peacock (Ganga Period, about 12th century) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as India Andhra Pradesh, Madanapalle.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

Karttikeya, the god of war, is known by various names, including Skanda, Kumara, and Shanmukha, as well as Murugan in southern India, where he is very popular. This monumental basalt sculpture is probably from the Madanapalle region of Andhra Pradesh. Carved in the round and riding a peacock, the commander of the gods is shown with six heads (shanmukha) and twelve arms, ten of which hold weapons aloft. Multiple arms and heads of Hindu deities usually denote their super-human power. According to legend, Karttikeya was born from the spilt seed of the Hindu divinity Shiva. He developed his six heads in order to nurse from his six mothers, the Pleiades (or Krittikas—hence his name, Karttikeya), a constellation of stars. The complex accounts of his miraculous birth and heroic exploits indicate that his character combines several streams of folk belief.

Object facts

• Title: Karttikeya, Commander of the Divine Army, Seated on a Peacock
• Date: Ganga Period, about 12th century
• Artist attribution: India Andhra Pradesh, Madanapalle
• Place of origin: Andhra Pradesh
• Medium: Basalt
• Dimensions: 150.5 × 121 × 39 cm (59 1/16 × 47 5/8 × 15 3/8 in.)
• Type: Sculpture
• Department: Arts of Asia
• Reference number: 1962.203

Collection credit

Purchased with funds provided by Mr. and Mrs. Sylvain S. Wyler

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.