Page 367 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

by the Portuguese themselves — along with scarcely roamed beyond the coastal trading major examples of traditional Indian art, the
maize, potato, and tomatoes — Vasco da Gama centers, they cannot have discovered the varie- creator's spiritual achievement was inspired as
and his men could not have complained that the ties and qualities of India's arts. Nor, alas, can much by observing life as by studying older
food was too hot. Food was eaten simply but we provide in this exhibition more than a small works of art. But Indian artist-craftsmen, like
appealingly from nature's own dinner plates, sampling. It is difficult to represent the period Indian musicians, were encouraged to impro-
brilliantly green, neatly trimmed plantain leaves. around 1492 in works of art that may be exhib- vise upon prescribed themes. In western India,
Cups were folded from dried leaves held to- ited. Once-magnificent textiles have survived in the artist of the Jain mandala (cat. 351), while
gether with twigs. Hindus ate only with their tattered bits; few ivories or wood carvings are adhering painstakingly to tradition, took plea-
right hands, reserving the left for "hygienic available to us; and the dazzling jewels, richly sure in lending a particular wiggle to his wiry
7
purposes/ Although most south Indians were set in gold, that have escaped the melting pot outlines and filling them in with vibrantly
vegetarians, Hindus of the princely caste, those are inaccessible. Greatly impressive architec- bright color. Similarly, the illustrators of a
outside the caste system, and Muslims ate fish tural complexes that still delight travelers Shahnama (Book of Kings) (cat. 352) so conta-
and even meat, cooked in sauces or grilled as are not easy to envision from transportable giously express their enjoyment in painting
kebabs. fragments. tents, heroes, and demons that more than five
Most Indian people live in villages; and most We are nevertheless fortunate in being able centuries later we share not only the joy but the
works of art belong to the folk level. We assume to show India's brilliant artistic heritage through underlying seriousness.
that the earliest Portuguese in India saw such a small number of superb bronze and stone One of the objects exhibited, an elephant
works: small images of bronze, wood, or ce- sculptures, manuscripts, and pictures. Whether beguilingly worked in rock crystal (cat. 14), is
ramic, made for family or village shrines; em- Hindu, Muslim, or Jain, whether from north, known to have been admired in the West, where
broidered, block-printed, painted, or woven south, east, or west, each proclaims the range, it was richly mounted in gold. Smallness belies
textiles; silver or bronze jewelry, sometimes set depth, and skill of India's artists and craftsmen. artistic stature. For this tactile pachyderm, a
with stones; arms and armor, in shapes that During the later fifteenth century, India's al- paradoxical handful for a Muslim patron in the
would have seemed eccentric to Europeans, ways fertile cultural traditions were in flux. If Deccan, is truly monumental. Drilled, ground,
often adorned with reliefs of divinities, animals, by this time much of India was in Muslim and polished, it expresses India's genius for
and birds; gilt-bronze or silver-gilt horse and hands, these were no longer "foreign" hands. stone sculpture. Sensitively observed, impres-
elephant trappings; and religious images painted Works of art — whether made from Muslim, sively abstracted into sensuously rounded curves,
on paper or on walls. Inasmuch as art of this Hindu, or other patrons — were instilled with it defines the gentle might and spirit of India's
sort was made for immediate use and much of it indigenous character. The stately, lively script most picturesque and fascinating animal. One
was ephemeral, it has not survived. Probably of the Muslim dedicatory inscription from West wishes that Vasco da Gama and his comrades
because broken images are believed to have lost Bengal (cat. 354) is as "Indian" as the Deccani could have known — and understood — this en-
their power, there is little respect in India for Qur'an (cat. 353). Both, indeed, draw upon the lightening object, a perfect souvenir from a
anything that is soiled or damaged, and such earthily dynamic rhythms we associate with glorious culture.
things are discarded, unless their materials are Indian art through the millennia. Vital as drum
valuable, in which case they are refashioned. beats, these can be sensed in the ground-quaking
Although the styles of court art changed swiftly, dance of Ganesh, the auspicious Hindu God of Bibliographical Note :
folk traditions were more conservative. Its arti- wisdom, jovially represented by a south Indian Diffie, Bailey W., and George D. Winius.
facts are "timeless" in design, hence very bronze (cat. 349). Comparable energy and verge foundations of the Portuguese Empire, 1415-
hard to date. For all of these reasons, this appear again in another south Indian bronze, a 1580 (Europe and the World in the Age of
important category of art is represented in this particularly lithe and voluptuous image of Parvati Expansion, ed. Boyd C. Shafer, i). Minneapolis
exhibition only by its influence upon "higher" in which earthly beauty and divine wisdom and Oxford, 1977.
forms, as in the Orissan relief of Lord Shiva and unite (cat. 347). Heras, H. South India Under the Vijayanagar
his family, to which it lent earthy and spiritual Although it might be argued that south In- Empire, reprint, New Delhi, 1980.
power (cat. 350). dia's sculptural traditions reached their peak far Herodotus. Works, trans. A. D. God ley.
Vasco da Gama and his officers might also on earlier, under the Chalukyas, Pallavas, or Cholas, Cambridge, Mass, and London, 1946.
occasion have seen grander works of art made the image of Yashoda and Krishna in honey- Sastri, K. A. Milakanta. A History of South
for the court. If so, they must have admired the toned bronze (cat. 348) is as moving as virtually India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of
Zamorin's rich but starkly shaped gold jewelry any south Indian metal image. Its fresh human Vijayanagar. Madras, 1958.
and splendid sword hilts, as well as boats with intensity, taut amplitude of form, and the en- Scammell, G. V. The World Encompassed:
carved and polychromed prows, and palanquins gaging interaction between the godly infant and The first European maritime empires c. 800-
enriched with panels of ivory, engraved and his lovely foster parent emerge not from hum- 1650. London, 1981.
polychromed with garlands, birds, animals, and drum repetition of learned aesthetic formulae Welch, Stuart Cary. India: Art and Culture
deities. but from the ripening of an emergent new 1300-1900 [exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of
Inasmuch as the Portuguese at this time phase in the cycle of art. Here, as in other Art] New York, 1985.

366 CIRCA 1492