Archives by Category: ‘Sculpture’

11
Mar

The unsung Chola painter Vs Da Vinci

In recent times, the Chola fresco paintings of Tanjore have been in the limelight for various reasons. Not many know that these 1000-year-old frescoes, were discovered as early as 1931 - by a 28-year-old historian, S.K. Govindaswami. Thankfully the HIndu did republish the article giving credit to the right person for the find.

An exciting discovery and a 1931 scoop for The Hindu

Sadly, even after 80 years - there are not many published works on these beautiful paintings and some rare attempts have been met with copyright and other issues. Normal visitors to the site are also not allowed permission to view these !! As i write this, i am forced to use already published photos on the net, but then the question lingers that when the artist himself didn’t sign the work,preferring to remain forever immortal yet anonymous, who are we to put copyrights on mere photos, thereby diminishing the great tradition of this land and depriving many of the sheer joy of viewing these.

To truly understand and appreciate the greatness of this artist, i wish to showcase one small panel in a fresco - the ascent of Saint Sundarar ( on Indra’s white elephant) along with Cheraman Perumal ( on a white horse) to the heavens. Much has been already written upon the theme of this panel and i am given to understand a few Phd thesis have been presented on it, sadly as is the case with many of our draconian policies, these are never accessible to anyone !!! Anyway, coming back to the post, we are going to see only a small portion of this panel - to be specific just Cheraman Perumal and the horse.

chermanperumal

Photo: Courtesy
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/01/india-ancient-art/behl-photography

Before we dwell further, just a short note on why i wanted to showcase this particular work. Somehow, horses have a certain raw energy in them, the ripple of the muscle, the grace of the arching limbs, the sway of the tail and mane - they are an artist’s delight ( next only to beautiful women)!. No wonder Da Vinci did considerable studies on them. Recently there was a program on Discovery or National Geographic about one of his unfinished works - a collosal 24 foot bronze horse. As i was following up on the sheer effort the great artist had put on the study of horses, there was something familar about it. See his sketches and read on..

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Photos: Various sources on the net

We now come to the Chola fresco. Sri C. Sivaramamurthy, one of the greatest connoisseurs of art and chola art in particular, writes about this specific piece thus ( he has sketched the outline as well for us to enjoy)

http://www.yabaluri.org/TRIVENI/CDWEB/SomeFrescoesoftheCholasnov33.htm

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The picture of the rider on the horse in fig. 2 is equally attractive in every detail. There is a grace in the way in which he holds the reins in one hand and the long wand in the other. The horse though reminding one of the animals the of that species, especially the white one in the centre in the Battle of St. Egidio by Paolo Uccello in the National Gallery, and though appearing to be defective in drawing to some extent in the so-called modern academic sense–one has to bear in mind that many pictures of great masters cannot stand this test so well, which is, to confess the truth, never a test of true greatness and worth–is yet a unique example of the skill in animal drawing in those far-off days, and testimony to this is borne by the magnificent elephant that is painted very close to it.

We will see the mentioned elephant in a subsequent post. Since the sketch is of low resolution, have retouched it for our better enjoyment. ( i wish i could get one of our more talented artists to paint it as per the original color scheme !!)

outline

Sri C. Sivaramamurthy, does mention the resemblance to Battle of St. Egidio by Paolo Uccello in the National Gallery.

Battle-of-San-Romano-(Battaglia-di-San-Romano)-large

The color combinations do bear an uncanny resemblance. But to me, as i look back at Da Vinci’s sketches and this fresco, it slowly dawns on me - every detail - the roundness of the horses back, the detailing of the rear legs, the fullness of the chest, the majestic head, the neatly cropped and braided mane, the prancing of the front legs,the exactness of proportion, the inch perfect joints, the subtly hinted muscularity - though not as pronounced as Da vinci’s studies, the clarity of the hoofs…..leaves me speech less.

Take a bow, O anonymous chola painter, we salute you.

p.s Maybe, on the occasion of the 1000th anniversary of the Big temple, the authorities can bring out atleast a book on these paintings if not putting these up on their sites for the world to relish.

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05
Mar

Where it all began in South India - Stone Circles

The cradle of civilisation - many cultures want to lay claims to this tag. When these claims are not backed by strong evidence, they step back to folklore, mythical storms, lost lands and sea incursions that magically wipe out all traces of civilisation, yet leave intact the memories. While we wait for more technological advances to enable more clear dating techniques, under water explorations etc etc, maybe in the near or distant future, i may be proved wrong on what i propose in today’s post.

Many cultures pride themselves on their antiquity and there is a conscious effort to push back the time frames to gain that extra yardage in terms of publicity. This is prevalent across all cultures and across continents. There is something that makes `yours’ special that you want to feed on it - that you are special and above the rest and want to prove that yours is the most ancient, technologically advanced etc etc. But then, there are certain events, that kind of make you sit up and realise reality - reasoning between the logical thinking of your brain and the vanity that still resides in your heart. Today’s post is one such.

On one side you have the reasoning like above, but on the other side you have things that completely baffle you, logically impossible coincidences. What we are going to see is one such. Stone Circles.

STONE CIRCLES

We were driving down a mud road enroute to Malaiyadipatti, inside pudukkottai district, when we chanced on a familiar blue board, albiet in a very shockingly sad condition.

stonecircles1

Yes, an ASI warning signboard - but we were a bit perplexed that there were no temples or ruins around. So, i stepped down to investigate.

stonecircles2

On closer scrutiny, we realised that this was where it all began…this was a stone circle. Dated to between 1000 to 300 BCE, these marked grave sites. Large urns, containing collected bones were buried in a small pit, and these stones mark the periphery.

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The beauty of this is that, this was no random stones bunched together, but these were stones made of laterite - material which is not available in the near vicinity, but in some cases as far away as 10 - 20 kms away. So this was part of some definitive ancestral worship ritual.

The beauty to me lay in their perfect geometry and how they have lasted so many years.

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But on the same side, i did realise that they were pretty rudimentary, no markings, no stone workings, no sculptures etc. True the contents of the cists were interesting and even recently the potsherds had a very scripts, Yet…

This comes to where we started with a few questions. True, there are definite accounts of atleast two major sea incursions in South India, destroying and permanently submerging vast tracts of land, swallowing advanced cultures - but even after providing for all those, would you return back to a iron age lifestyle - for this is not an isolated find, scroll through the ASI site and search for megalithic !!

ASI - Megalithic

The puzzle gets more interesting if you google for stone circles and find them all over the world.

But what i wanted to say in the post, would maybe not go down well with even a few of my friends - the Great Pyramids of Egypt had been standing already for 2000 years when our great great forefathers made these stone circles in Pudukkottai.

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