Shri Raga: An Illustration from a Ragamala Series (c. 1740): Art, History and Details

Shri Raga: An Illustration from a Ragamala Series (c. 1740) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The verse associated with Shri Raga corresponds closely with this scene: His body, bluish in hue, is marvelously built. He is always graced with the company of auspicious Shri Lakshmi. He sits on a throne of gold, and before him Narada sits playing on his vina. He has decorated himself with garlands of flowers, and also with ornaments set with jewels. Shri raga is thus conceived in sentiment, of whom all learned men sing praises. The horse-headed figure claps his hands and accompanies the sage, wearing saffron garments and playing on the stringed instrument called a vina. He may be derived from the courtly commander of Indra, seen in the Jain manuscripts. Poppies bloom in the formal garden below the pure white terrace, and they are echoed by the oranges set on the windows of the house at the upper right.

Object facts

• Title: Shri Raga: An Illustration from a Ragamala Series
• Date: c. 1740
• Culture: India, Mughal, 18th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Page: 33.2 x 23 cm (13 1/16 x 9 1/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art - Mughal
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 2013.339

Collection credit

Gift in honor of Madeline Neves Clapp; Gift of Mrs. Henry White Cannon by exchange; Bequest of Louise T. Cooper; Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund; From the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Mace, Sonia Rhie [formerly Quintanilla], Mohsen Ashtiany, Catherine Glynn, Pedro Moura Carvalho, Marcus Fraser, and Ruby Lal. Mughal Paintings: Art and Stories: the Cleveland Museum of Art. London: D Giles Limited, 2016.

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.