Kapaleeswarar Temple
| Support Type: | Paper |
| Paint Type: | Mixed Media |
| Current Location: | Unknown (Originally published in a Tamil periodical, likely Ananda Vikatan or a related publication Silpi contributed to; exact location not confirmed in available sources) |
P.M. Sreenivasan went by the name Silpi and it's basically all he's remembered as now. He worked through the middle of the twentieth century, mostly in pen and ink, occasionally watercolour, and almost always on the same subject; South Indian temples and the deities inside them. He spent most of that career at Ananda Vikatan. A lot of his work was done at night, after the temple had cleared out, which meant sketching sanctums that hardly anyone outside the priesthood ever really got to see up close. This drawing is one of a set of Silpi illustrations hosted on the Indian Heritage site's gallery of his Tamil-publication work. The Tamil text (கபாலீஸ்வரர் கோயில்) running across the top state is as Kapaleeswarar Koyil, an old Shiva temple in Chennai built for Kapaleeswarar and Karpagambal. Done in his distinctive style using pen and ink, the rajagopuram takes up most of the page, row after row of stucco figures stacked up the tower, and then down at the bottom he's worked in a smaller shrine, a mandapam, a carved pillar. What stands out is how populated the drawing is compared to some of his more austere architectural studies — there are worshippers scattered across the courtyard, a couple walking with a child, others seated or standing near the pillared hall, which grounds the temple in everyday devotional life rather than presenting it as an empty monument.
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