Article written by Mr. Milo Beach

Dressed as a bejewelled courtier, and with a Rajput turban, Krishna plays the flute for two entranced ladies—whose necklaces suggest that they are no mere village milkmaids. In this case, the presentation of Krishna is suitable for the walls on which it is placed. Together with additional images, including a depiction in which the god wears a gold turban and a robe decorated with the formal floral forms that first came into fashion at the Mughal court of Shah Jahan, this is found in a space included among the earliest and finest decorated rooms in Rajasthan. It is a small space in the interior of the oldest section of the palace at Deogarh (in Rajasthan), from which one of the greatest nobles serving the Maharana of Udaipur ruled his own territories; and the white walls and gold pigment must have helped to bring light into a room that was otherwise rather dark. Like other spaces in the earliest Rajput palaces, the room would have taken on different functions as the building expanded in size over time. We know from inscriptions on paintings on paper, that this room—the kapardwara—was initially a reception room. These inscriptions tell us specifically that his artists sometimes presented pictures to the ruling rawat when he was seated amidst these wall-paintings.

Paintings were not usually placed on palace walls without a purpose—or at least a symbolic function. Here the princely character of Krishna compliments that of the rawat, and brings the god down to earth to join the rawat’s courtiers. The ruler’s familiarity with the gods is therefore made clear, just as the frieze at the bottom of the same wall, showing elephants (symbols of royal power) in procession and combat, reminds us of his mastery of the physical world. While it is a small space, for any of those in attendance on the rawat, these paintings would reinforce his status.

Historically this room at Deogarh is especially important. It was painted in the late seventeenth century, soon after Deogarh was founded as the new capital of one branch of the Chundavat clan. In style, the painters at work in the kapardwara must have been trained at nearby Udaipur, where workshops of artists had been established by at least the first decade of the century. (Few early wall-paintings from elsewhere in Mewar can rival these from Deogarh in quality, importance, or condition, however.) By the middle of the eighteenth century, the increasingly prosperous and powerful rawats of Deogarh provided independent support for artists, and a local style of painting developed under their patronage that is unrivalled in Rajasthan for its originality and quality. This painting is at the root of that later development.

It is not simply its architectural or historical context that makes this painting important. It is a superb, lively depiction of Krishna fluting. The animation with which the painter has endowed the god immediately makes us understand the importance that the Krishna holds for his devotees.