Jyotirmaya Samanta

Bamboo in the Wind

'Bamboo in the Wind' by Yi Jeong (1541-1626), Korea, early 17th century. It's an ink and wash on paper hanging scroll . This piece is more of an object of meditation on the human character than simply an examination of a plant. The painting's subdued…

Human Flood (La Fiumana)

Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo’s Painting: Human Flood (La Fiumana) Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo’s 1895-1896 artwork Human Flood (La Fiumana) shows a massive, tightly-knit gathering of laborers moving forward towards the viewer. It depicts two men in the front with a woman and child behind them…

The camel rider, the snake and the buffalo

What has been reduced to an animal fable here, animal narratives represent human tendencies toward vice or virtue and the Camel Rider, the Snake and the Buffalo, one of the animal illustrations commissioned by Anant for the Mughal manuscript of Anvr-i Suhayl in 1610-11 (created…

Monk holding a Cross

Domenico Veneziano's Monk Holding a Cross is not only a devotional image but in fact, a fascinating portrayal of devout spiritual presence revealed in terms of the human form. Painted some 500 odd years ago, during the years of 1445 to1448, there remains much mystery…

The Burial of Christ

Baltasar de Echave y Rioja's painting, The Burial of Christ, is not merely a painting of the internment of Christ. It's an exploration of death and hope, of grief and sacrifice. Executed in 1665, the work depicts Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus with the dead…

Signet of the King of Delhi, Abu Zafar Siraj-ud-Din Muhammad Bahadur Shah Badshah Ghazi

“Signet of the King of Delhi, Abu Zafar Siraj-ud-Din Muhammad Bahadur Shah Badshah Ghazi,” by Ghulam Ali Khan, at the Smithsonian, features the central script written in Arabic-Persian, which makes up the imperial insignia. The whole design is highly decorated, all that gold, symmetrical and…

Akbar Receiving the Drums and Standards Captured from Abdullah Khan Uzbeg

Akbar receiving the drums and standards captured from Abdullah Khan Uzbeg (described by Mohesh and painted by Anant) conveys something much more than the glory of a military conquest. It seems to make an important declaration about the power of the Mughal emperor. Drawn from…

Court Lady

"Court Lady," attributed to Mughal court artist Bishandas, was produced during the time of Jahangir, ca. 1620. This not just a typical picture of the rich and noble lady, but it also appears as if it depicts a kind of inner calm and beauty in…

The School of Athens

School of Athens is no portrait gallery of old sage but a portrait of eternal humanism's search for truth in inquiry, dialectic and rational. Plato is leading, pointing to the sky, whilst Aristotle gesturing to the ground, thereby indicating idealistic and empirical approach in parallel.…

Miracle of the True Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo

Gentile Bellini's Miracle of the True Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo is not so much an illustration of an impossible event, as much as an engaging panorama of an actual city of Renaissance Europe, Venice. Although the miraculous resuscitation of the holy treasure…

The Construction of Agra Fort

The Construction of Agra Fort Tulsi the Younger, for the Akbarnama, c 1590–1595 The image does far more than simply present one great architectural achievement, it rejoices in human collaboration for the benefit of great ambition. In fact, by leaving the Emperor himself quite empty…

Church of St. George on horseback

Mattia Preti's St George on Horseback (1658) is not simply the image of a Christian warrior saint, it is an eloquent testament to the strength of faith, fortitude and moral integrity that can conquer apprehension and sin. Preti portrays St George not as a pugilistic…

Portrait of an officer

Nicolas de Largillire, Portrait of an Officer, c 1714-15 There is much more to this likeness of a youthful officer than simply a visual account of power and privilege. It is a contemplation of duty, title and identity. From the shining steel cuirass, to the…

A Palace

"A Palace" by Zhao Boju is more than a study in imperial architecture; it is an ode to the balance and harmony between human civilization and nature. While the palace, elegantly and finely drawn, is contained in a modest area of the composition, immense mountains…

Duryodhana and Salya

In this Mughal miniature for Akbar’s Razmnama (Persian version of Mahabharata), Duryodhana tries convincing King Salya to serve as Karna’s charioteer before the battle of Kurukshetra. A painting full of symbolism, showing the plush royal seats, entourage, setting implying all show of authority, while negotiation…

The Rest on the Flight into Egypt with Saint John the Baptist

This interpretation seems perfectly appropriate because if we look at Fra Bartolommeo’s “Rest on the Flight into Egypt with St John the Baptist” from around 1509 then this event of being driven away from the Holy Family’s land, their homeland becoming a country of fear…

Narasimha killing Hiranyakashipu

The seventeen-century Indian painter, Devidasa, captures what is arguably one of the most exciting scenes in the Bhagavata Purana in his “Narasimha Kills Hiranyakashipu.” It’s the image of Vishnu-half-man, half-lion-dispatches with the evil emperor, Hiranyakashipu, at the behest of his loyal son, Prahlada. From head…

Portrait of Naser Al Din Shah

Portrait of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, by Aliakbar Mozayyan-o-Dolleh, is more than the likeness of a nineteenth-century Persian monarch, it is a meditation on the fragile relationship between authority and humanity. The Shah is adorned with the emblems of sovereignty: the jeweled cap, ceremonial attire,…

Saint John of the Cross

This painting feels less like a portrait of a saint and more like an inward vision of spiritual endurance. Saint John of the Cross is shown not in triumph, but in stillness, as if holiness were not a loud victory over suffering but a quiet…

The Face

Rabindranath Tagore's Face (ca. 1930) is striking in its restraint. Executed in hurried pen lines and ink washes, the portrait fills the page with an anonymous, weary face whose downcast eyes and deeply shadowed features convey quiet melancholy rather than dramatic emotion. The Metropolitan Museum…

A Pen Box with Architectural Cartouches

A Pen Box with Architectural Cartouches by Ali Ashraf. At first view, the object is of exquisite workmanship, designed for use as a writing utensil in the workshop of a great master in Shiraz in 1743-44, during a vibrant period of Persian lacquer work. Ali…

Coronación de la Virgen (The Crowning of the Virgin)

The Crowning of the Virgin, by the Mexican artist of the eighteenth century Nicols Enrquez, illustrates a familiar Christian motif: after death, Mary, the mother of Jesus, is crowned queen of heaven by the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) amidst a choir of angels. Painted…

A Supplicant at a Hindu Temple

A Supplicant at a Hindu Temple is a folio from the Hamzanama, made around 1570 in the early Mughal style, a hybrid visual language shaped by Persian and Indian artists. The Met describes it as a worshipper respectfully saluting a Hindu shrine, received by a…

Scholar Viewing a Waterfall

Ma Yuan's 'Scholar Viewing a Waterfall' is an essay on proportion. A major figure of the Southern Song academic school in Hangzhou, Ma Yuan's small album leaf in ink and color on silk was executed in the early 13th century, according to the Met. What's…

The Sacred Bodhi Tree

The Sacred Bodhi Tree (Oldest Tree in the world) strikes me as enlightenment as ecology. The artist, Mukul Dey was trained in painting and printmaking under the mentorship of Rabindranath Tagore, at the Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan, before becoming an innovative pioneer of drypoint etching in…

Grapevine

This is Matsumura Goshun's "Grapevine" from after 1790 as a hanging scroll (ink on silk), a weightless meditation on abundance. Grapes historically signified fertility, harvest, and longevity; they were also associated with autumn poetry; it shows the transition Goshun made from the literary-minded school toward…

The Ninth Wave

Ivan Aivazovsky's most famous work, "The Ninth Wave," from 1850 (State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg) captures this feeling well. A "ninth wave" is a sailor's term for a storm's last, gigantic and usually disastrous wave-and the survivors are clinging to flotsam in Aivazovsky's painting. But…

The Potrait of Laure Bro

Portrait of Laure Bro feels like a portrait of restraint under pressure. Théodore Géricault, one of the pioneers of French Romanticism, painted it around 1818. The woman sits elegantly, but the hard shadow and the strip of light from the window divide her world in…

La mort de Marie Stuart (The Death of Mary Stuart)

‘La mort de Marie Stuart (The Death of Mary Stuart) is more a rumination upon the last cruelty of power than a depiction of a particular moment in history. Here is a queen not of legends or conquest, but a body broken before eyes as…

Fireside

Fireside by Takeuchi Seihō appears disarmingly simple: two puppies resting beside a fire poker. Yet, like much of Seihō's work, its simplicity conceals remarkable emotional depth. A master of the Nihonga tradition, Seihō was celebrated for observing animals with extraordinary sensitivity, painting them not as…

Lovers Embracing

Lovers Embracing is, on one level, a celebration of intimacy. Yet what makes the painting enduring is that it portrays love not as spectacle, but as absorption. The lovers seem to inhabit a world of their own, enclosed by lush textiles, flowering plants, and the…

A Lodge in the Hills

A Lodge in the Hills feels like a meditation on distance, not isolation. The small house is almost hidden among trees and rocks, as if human life here is not meant to dominate the landscape but to rest quietly within it. The mountains rise like…

London: Interior of the Rotunda at Ranelagh

London: The Interior of the Rotunda at Ranelagh by Canaletto is a painting of, on the surface, an attractive eighteenth-century crowd. London’s Ranelagh Gardens, home of the famous Rotunda, was once among the capital’s finest meeting spots where you came to perform or at least…

Asavari Ragini

Asavari Ragini from a Ragamala series is an image of music turned into feeling: a woman in leaves, calm amid danger, speaking to snakes as if fear itself can be gently persuaded. The Cleveland Museum of Art describes her as wearing jewelry and a diaphanous…

Venice: Campo S. Vidal and Santa Maria della Carità ('The Stonemason's Yard')

Canaletto’s 'The Stonemason’s Yard' seems like Venice in an unfeigned, unguarded moment. The picture-one of his finest of his early paintings-depicts a temporary stoneyard in Campo San Vidal, with the Grand Canal and the church of Santa Maria della Carit in the distance. What makes…

Jeanne Hébuterne

'Jeanne Hébuterne' reads more as an image of inwardness than of a person. Modigliani reduces everything to line and posture and stillness that’s uncanny in its composure. Her inclined head and softened features speak not of coquetry but of thought, not of presentation but absorption;…

Portrait of Maude Abrantes

The Portrait of Maude Abrantes (1907) captures something beyond a likeness. This portrait, painted by Amedeo Modigliani in the early years in Paris, before the stretched canvases, elongated eyes, and almond shapes that we associate with his work, already suggests his intrigue with the psychological…

Insects and Grasses

Insects and Grasses is, at first glance, a painting about things we usually overlook. There are no heroes, no grand mountains, no dramatic events. Only dragonflies, grasshoppers, a snail, and tangled grasses; simple life. Yet that quietness is precisely its power. Created in 18th-century Japan…

Passion (Aizen)

Aizen (Passion) by Kawabata Ryūshi feels like desire made visible, but not as a simple romance. Ryūshi (1885–1966) was a Nihonga painter who pushed Japanese painting toward bold, decorative scale and dramatic expression. The title is important: aizen can mean passion, even carnal longing, while…

A Meadow at Sunset

A Meadow at Sunset by Paul Huet feels like a silence you can almost stand inside. The field is simple, but the sky is alive with changing light, so the painting seems to ask a human question: what do we do with beauty that is…

Govalano

Govalano (“Milk Maid”) by Somalal Shah appears to celebrate the dignity, resilience, and quiet beauty of rural Gujarati life. Shah was known for depicting the people and culture of Saurashtra with sensitivity and realism, often using a characteristic wash technique. � Wikipedia The women dominate…

Rama and Lakshmana attack Tataka

In this painting I am struck by Rama and Lakshmana's showdown with the demoness Tataka. For me, the painting represents an example of proper power triumphing over uncontrolled energy. Tataka with her oversized red face, sharp claws, and towering presence seems like a monstrous embodiment…

The Pool by Victor Borisov Musatov

"The Pool" feels like a dream suspended between reality and memory. The two women, dressed in flowing garments, less like ordinary figures than symbols of inner states one seated and reflective, the other standing like an apparition in the water. The pool acts as an…

Princess and attendant in trompe l’oeil window

The painting feels like a meditation on refinement, intimacy, and illusion. The princess sits within a framed “window,” but the surrounding borders make the whole image behave like a precious object within another precious object. That layered structure may suggest courtly life as a world…

Princess Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel

This regal, somewhat uncomfortable, portrayal of Princess Caroline of Brunswick by Sir Thomas Lawrence, created in 1804, is far more than a royal portrayal; it offers a visual statement about identity, defiance, and isolation. Painted in eye-catching red (the colour of danger and indiscretion), the…

Sultan Bayazid before Timur

This is not just a depiction of the Ottoman Sultan Bayazid's defeat by Timur in the battle of Ankara (1402). In this work the artist is more concerned with status, power and the vulnerability of earthly rule. Timur is positioned on his richly decorated throne…

Judith with the Head of Holophernes

To me, Giorgione’s Judith with the Head of Holofernes is less a celebration of violence than a meditation on moral courage and divine justice. Judith is depicted not as a triumphant warrior but as a calm, dignified, and contemplative figure. Her serene expression contrasts sharply…

Portrait of Alessandro de'Medici

Alessandro de’ Medici is staged as a ruler who has earned authority rather than merely inherited it. The polished armor turns his body into a reflective surface hard, controlled, almost untouchable while the exposed hands and relaxed seated pose keep him human and politically approachable.…

Portrait of John V, King of Portugal

Pompeo Batoni’s Portrait of John V, King of Portugal presents monarchy as both elegant and absolute. The young king is shown in gleaming armor, draped in rich fabrics and framed by royal symbols, especially the crown beside him. His calm gaze and poised posture suggest…

VIBHASA RAGINI

Vibhasa Ragini is a delicate Rajput miniature painting that blends music, poetry, and devotion into a visual form. In Indian classical tradition, a ragini is often personified, and here the intimate scene of the royal couple suggests emotional harmony, love, and spiritual longing. The blue-skinned…

Kadam

The artwork Kadam by Bhawani Das is a delicate botanical illustration that celebrates the beauty and harmony of nature. The painting carefully depicts the kadam tree branch with scientific precision, yet it also carries a poetic quality through its balanced composition and soft colors. The…

Battle of San Romano

Paolo Uccello's Battle of San Romano is so much more than an depiction of a battle fought and won. He dramatises confusion, action and man's desire to excel within a meticulously organised battle scene, strewn with corpses, charging horses and shattered lances. He has managed…

The Creation of Adam

Michelangelo's painting "Creation of Adam" is known as one of the most recognisable images created in the Renaissance period. The artwork depicts an important moment in the Bible where God gives life to Adam. However, it appears that it has more to say on a…

Damayanti and the Hamsa

Raja Ravi Varma’s “Damayanti and the Hamsa” (1899) is based on the Nalopakhyana section of the Mahabharata. Damayanti, the princess of Vidarbha and the daughter of King Bhima known for her unwavering love towards her husband Nala, the king of the Nishadha kingdom. This painting…

Calm Before the Storm - Nikolay Dubovsky

Calm Before the Storm by Nikolay Dubovsky feels less like a depiction of weather and more like a meditation on emotional silence before upheaval. While there are dark clouds and a churning sea, it feels less like a painting of weather and more like a…

Paulownians and Chrysanthemum

Sakai Hōitsu was an elegant artist and monk from the Edo period who connected the noble style of Rinpa to a more intimate view of nature in this two-panel screen. As a member of a prominent samurai family, he later spent years trying to recreate…

Jain Ascetic Walking Along a Riverbank by Mughal Painter Basawan, c. 1600

Jain Ascetic Walking Along a Riverbank by Mughal Painter Basawan, c. 1600, housed today at The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland is a sensitively painted portrait made for the collection of the mughal emperor Akbar who was genuinely curious about the tenets of jainism. Shantichandra…

Monkeys and Bears Fighting in the Madhuvana-Grove

The Fight of Drunken Monkeys and Bears seems like an art work made in the modern era, since it was painted nearly three hundred years back. But within this chaotic composition lies a keen social commentary by Pandit Seu. The intoxicated monkeys and aggressive bears…

Portrait of Prince Nasir al-Din Mirza

The painting "Portrait of Prince Nasir al-Din Mirza" is an important example of the political culture and artistic language of mid-nineteenth-century Persia under the Qajar dynasty. The young prince is displayed in a rigid position on a very simple background while concentrating entirely on his…