Name: Kamod Ragini Painting - Arts Vale
SKU: ADU-000074
Availability: InStock

Description

The character of court painting in Rajasthan owes as much to local, non-imperial styles as it does to the Mughal court. This is brilliantly demonstrated in the Sirohi ragamalas produced for non-court patrons around 1690 in southwest Rajasthan. This exuberant and luminous Kamod Ragini is from the first and finest of the sets.

In a hilly landscape, two women bring offerings to a shrine, and one pauses to feed two peacocks. An orange-tinged sky suggests early evening, the time of day Kamod is traditionally performed. The composition and palette are precisely calculated: The playful rectangles evoke architectural forms in the lower registers, the red window set squarely into the middle of a yellow hillside, and the peacock tail, banana leaf, and temple spire that just beyond the borders are signs of a master of abstraction.

The style is rooted in pre-Mughal tradition, particularly its bold use of red, strong color contrasts, the modulating contour line that conveys the weight of bodies, and the squarish heads of the women.

Raga (Sanskrit, color or passion) is the term for a classical music mode, a set framework for improvisation. Having originated in the first millennium, ragas were systematized and classified from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries. They were classified into ragamalas, meaning garlands of musical modes. A common system recognized six raga husbands, each “married” to five Ragini wives for a total of thirty-six “families.” Families of musical modes sometimes included sons or ragaputras as well. By the fifteenth century, ragas had become associated with specific moods, times, seasons, affective properties, deities, lovers, and heroes. Around 1590-1620, the illustrated ragamala series became a favorite subject for Rajput patrons and some Mughals, such as Abd-ur Rahim, patron of the Freer Ramayana and the Laud Ragamala. Specific iconographies were developed to depict each mode. These formulae lent themselves to variations, which were sometimes dependent on region.

Illustrated ragas evoke mood and engender feelings, as do musical compositions. But the connection seems to be indirect. Although some music connoisseurs may have internally “heard” a composition when viewing its image, ragamalas were probably more broadly valued for their poetic and pictorial pleasures. The commission of a ragamala series would also have been understood as a sign of a patron’s cultivated sensibility.