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Title:"Varaha, the Boar Incarnation of Vishnu, Saves the Earth," Illustrated folio from a dispersed Vishnu Avatara (The Incarnations of Vishnu)
Date:ca. 1650
Medium:Opaque watercolor and gold on paper
Dimensions:Page: H. 12 in. (30.5 cm) W. 9 1/16 in. (23 cm) Painting: H. 10 1/8 in. (25.7 cm) W. 7 1/8 in. (18.1 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Promised Gift of the Kronos Collections, 2015
Just as individual pictures and complete series devoted to Krishna were a popular subject of Indian painting, reflecting a widespread religious devotion to the BlueSkinned Lord, so individual pictures and complete series devoted to Rama, another of Vishnu’s earthly incarnations, were almost as popular, reflecting a widespread religious devotion to Rama’s essential being Vishnu, the Supreme God (according to Vaishnavas). Because the god Vishnu was essentially the same as the gods Krishna or Rama, series depicting Vishnu’s Ten Incarnations (Das Avatara), often appended to series illustrating the Bhagavata Purana , the Ramayana, or the Gita Govinda (see cat. no. 78), became extremely popular as well. The present illustrated folio (and cat. no. 19) derives from such a Vishnu Avatara series, made for the ruler of Bikaner or for a member of his court. Vishnu appears at the center of the composition in the guise he assumed in his third appearance on earth: the Boar Incarnation, or Varaha Avatara. He has the crowned head of a boar and supports the diminutive figure of Priya, the earth, on his upraised tusks. His four arms hold a mace, a discus, a lotus flower, and a conch shell, the god’s four principal attributes. As in all of his earthly incarnations, Vishnu is blue in color and wears yellow, untailored garments, just as Rama (another earthly incarnation of Vishnu) is blue in color and wears yellow, untailored garments in cat. no. 19. Varaha treads on the dead body of an ugly, horned demon wearing the pelt of a lion. Previously this same demon had threatened the defenseless Priya with total extinction. The figure of Varaha is placed like a giant icon against the backdrop of the Cosmic Ocean, a flat expanse of tarnished silver decorated with lotus flowers and lotus leaves. Two water nymphs have bobbed to the surface of the Cosmic Ocean to render homage to Vishnu, the Great God. For a Mewar ca. 1655 depiction of Varaha, the Boar Incarnation, see Topsfield 2002, fig. 49. For other paintings from this same series, see ......
Inscription: Inscribed on the front in black and red ink on the yellow text panel with two lines of Sanskrit written in devanagari script: “The celebrated one, manifest as the Boar [Avata¯ra of Vishnu], Lord and Lion of the Earth, Foremost Slayer of [the Demon] Hiranya¯ksha, who raised the earth on the tips of his tusks, which had been submerged in the waters of the ocean, [and] reached up to Hell.” Inscribed on the reverse in black and red ink with five lines of Braj Bhasha written in devanagari script describing the scene
Sotheby's 2012?
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Divine Pleasures: Painting from India's Rajput Courts—The Kronos Collections," June 13–September 11, 2016.
Senior Research Assistant Courtney A. Stewart highlights paintings featured in Divine Pleasures: Painting from India's Rajput Courts—The Kronos Collections that depict various incarnations of the god Vishnu.
The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world.
