Page 165 - Eye of the beholder

“bani-Thani” - The decked uP lady
The sinuous eyes, the stretched upper body, the aquiline nose - these are the hallmarks of the Kishangarh school of Indian miniature painting that blossomed in the mid 18th century. The paintings are reminiscent of the mannerist school of art in Europe which existed also at the same time, and was characterized by the abnormally elongated necks and straight-jacketed appearance.
Kishangarh was a small princely state in Rajasthan founded in 1609 by Kishan Singh. The oeuvre of this school is therefore not very voluminous. The excessively stylized idiom came into being only in the mid 18th century, during the reign of Maharaja Sawant Singh, and is therefore even rarer. Though collectors and viewers relish these works, very few are inquisitive about the genesis of this style.
Maharaja Sawant Singh in particular, and the Kishangarh royal family in general were devout Vaishnavs of the Vallabhachaya sect- worshippers of Krishna. Music was patronized in the court, and the queen mother had a young, pretty handmaid called Vishnupriya who also excelled at singing. Sawant Singh’s infatuation with Vishnupriya soon reached such levels that she graduated from being a handmaid to an important mistress to one of the chief queens in a remarkably short span of time. Because of the ostentatious manner in which she decked herself, she was popularly known as “Bani-Thani” - well turned out.
Bani-Thani and Maharaja Sawant Singh sang together, and composed poetry - she under the pen name of Rasikbihari and he under the name of Nagari Das. Nihal Chand - the chief court painter of Kishangarh introduced a new stylized idiom in the court paintings to depict Bani-Thani and Sawant Singh as Krishna and Radha. It is widely believed that the facial features of the main characters of the paintings of this era are modeled on those of Bani-Thani, making her important and her paintings desirable for generations to come worldwide.
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