Home > Digitized Walters Manuscripts

This document is a tranformation of a TEI P5 XML manuscript description incorporating images. If you have trouble reading special or non-Latin characters on this page, please make sure you have appropriate Unicode fonts installed and an up-to-date web browser.

Walters Ms. W.876, Single leaf of Nayaka and attendants in leafy bowers

Browse images (Browse images in a new window) | TEI in XML format

Shelf mark

W.876


Manuscript

Single leaf of Nayaka and attendants in leafy bowers


Text title
Nayaka and attendants in leafy bowers

Abstract

This painting, dating to the twelfth century AH / eighteenth CE, depicts three women seated within two leafy bowers. The Nayaka (female lover or heroine) sits alone, while her two female companions, known as sakhis, converse in the other bower. The painting may represent Utka nayaka, a classification for heroines who are awaiting or yearning for their lovers. Often, they are shown on a bed of flowers or leaves that they have prepared in expectation of meeting their lovers. In the landscape are animals engaged in various activities. An outcrop of rocks in the distance forms a horizon, above which is a blue sky streaked with light gray or white washes to suggest a thin layer of high clouds.


Date

ca. 1750 CE


Origin

Delhi (?)


Form

Leaf


Genre

Historical


Language:

No linguistic content; Not applicable


Support material

Paper

Mounted on pasteboard


Extent

Foliation: Not applicable


Dimensions

22.0 cm wide by 30.0 cm high


Layout
  1. Image: 9.5 cm wide by 18.4 cm high

Contents:
fols. W.876a - W.876b:
  1. Title: Nayaka and attendants in leafy bowers
  2. Decoration note: Borders of salmon and blue with floral illuminated motifs

Decoration:

fol. W.876a:

  1. W.876, fol. W.876a
  2. Title: Nayaka and attendants in leafy bowers
  3. Form: Painting
  4. Label: This painting, dating to the twelfth century AH / eighteenth CE, depicts three women seated within two leafy bowers. The Nayaka (female lover or heroine) sits alone, while her two female companions, known as sakhis, converse in the other bower. The painting may represent Utka nayaka, a classification for heroines who are awaiting or yearning for their lovers. Often, they are shown on a bed of flowers or leaves that they have prepared in expectation of meeting their lovers. In the landscape are animals engaged in various activities. An outcrop of rocks in the distance forms a horizon, above which is a blue sky streaked with light gray or white washes to suggest a thin layer of high clouds.

fol. W.876b:

  1. W.876, fol. W.876b
  2. Title: Nayaka and attendants in leafy bowers (back)
  3. Form: Back

Acquisition

Gift of John and Berthe Ford, 2001


Bibliography

Pal, Pratapaditya. Desire and Devotion: Art from India, Nepal, and Tibet in the John and Berthe Ford Foundation. (London: Phillip Wilson, 2001), 167.


Contributors

Principal cataloger: Gacek, Adam

Catalogers: Landau, Amy; Smith, Sita

Editor: Bockrath, Diane

Conservators: Jewell, Stephanie; Quandt, Abigail

Contributors: Barrera, Christina; Emery, Doug; Herbert, Lynley; Noel, William; Simpson, Shreve; Tabritha, Ariel; Toth, Michael B.; Valle, Chiara


Publisher

The Walters Art Museum


License

Licensed for use under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Access Rights, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/legalcode. It is requested that copies of any published articles based on the information in this data set be sent to the curator of manuscripts, The Walters Art Museum, 600 North Charles Street, Baltimore MD 21201.