Celebrating Sensuality and Desire in Miniature Paintings

enrouteI
January 23, 2023

Article Written By EIH Researcher And Writer

Aadrit Banerjee

Miniatures, small-sized yet minutely detailed artworks, initially were illustrative accompaniments of manuscripts that emerged in India around the 10th or 11th century, and by the time of the Mughals, had developed into a full-blown and highly specialised genre of visual art. In the production process of manuscripts, the text would be written first, and then a painter would finish the work. Jeremiah P Losty, art critic, and formerly a curator of Indian manuscripts and paintings at the British Museum, emphasises: “Individual paintings—not from manuscripts—came in fashion under Akbar in the late 16th century, primarily in the form of portraits”. These artworks, despite their small size, carry a world within, and among other things, are pregnant with a distinct sense of sensuality. This article explores the representation of eroticism in select miniature paintings dating from the 16th to 19th Century. Many of the paintings, it refers to, are a part of the famous book: “Court & Courtship: Indian Miniatures in the TAPI Collection”. What must be kept in mind, during the analysis of these paintings, is both the content and the form — for miniatures by themselves are very unique, painstakingly created, and represent a fascinating segment of the visual art history of the land.

In one of the paintings in the book depicting Radha and Krishna, one sees the divine couple in an intimate pose: the blue-lord leans over Radha dressed in a “plum-and-indigo hued skirt”, and despite being abashed by his advances, Radha matches her lover’s gaze with an equal intensity. The frame suggests movement and gesticulation evident in the portrayal of Krishna’s yellow waist cloth and his flowered garland making the scene intimate and dramatic with the red wine spilling from the goblet. The Radha-Krishna figure presented an opportunity to these miniature artists — particularly perceivable in the paintings from the Rajasthani school — by which they could portray the sensuous and erotic, while elevating, at the same time, the temporal and mundane to the spiritual.

The implicit sensuousness in the Radha-Krishna miniatures becomes more explicit in “Tailangi Ragini” (1680-85), an early Pahari ragamala miniature, which shows a bare-breasted woman against a yellow background. Her body is decorated using pearl ornaments, and a male servant oils her arms. Losty points out how his eyes are “torn between fixing them on his work and shyly looking up at her” while the woman’s eyes meet his glances in a daring manner.

The presence of jewellery as the “seductive armour” heightens the sensuousness of the frame. Shilpa Shah, who along with her husband had devoted her life to the collection of hand-crafted textiles of India, was “electrified” by the “pure ‘physicality’ of the painting”, when she first saw the artwork. “The juxtaposition of the lady’s naked upper body against her loose tresses adorned with ropes of pearl necklaces, tasselled pearl and emerald bajubands, florette hoops ornamenting her ears, render an alluring, erotic charge that leaves you spellbound,” Shah astutely observes.

“A Lady at her Toilette” (1810-30), an 8.5 inch by 4.5 inch miniature, shows a woman, standing alone in a private chamber, what must be the bathroom, combing and tying her hair. Despite the small size, the painting depicts with panache, as is typical of the miniature painting style—the separate strands of the lady’s hair. Losty remarks these strands were painted using brushes made of squirrel hair which “reputedly fined down to a single hair for details”. Her pink peshwaj is shown with remarkable precision, while the palms of her hands are lac-dyed, and her eyes are lost in a dream-state.

The representation of the women, when it comes to the aspect of sensuality, achieves a marked distinction in these miniatures and requires critical attention. Commenting on the collection of paintings in the book Court & Courtship, and the diversity in the depiction of women in the Rajput, Deccani, Pahari and Mughal miniatures, Shah notes: “Women scarcely formed subjects in Mughal paintings” for “Islamic convention shielded women from public view”. However, Rajasthani artists portrayed women in all their absolute finery. These women sport “bare midriffs and ample jewellery”, while the Hyderabadi/Deccani ladies are slender, and are shown wearing long-sleeved, gracious peshwaj, coupled with elaborate Persianised headgear.

There is lacuna in the representation of common women folk, for the paintings were produced for an aristocratic audience, and thus, there is a class angle to the depiction of sensuality in these paintings. Since the patrons were mostly male, there is an inherent male, patriarchal voyeuristic gaze in these miniatures. Losty highlights how the male patrons and male audience for whom such paintings were made “at certain times would get a somewhat perverse pleasure from viewing [them].” Consequently, the men depicted in the miniatures were shown as conquerors, riding elephants and welding spears, exercising their power over land, resources and women. Women, on the other hand, were shown sexualized in their boudoir, conversing with their lovers or other female companions. The theme of queer desire was also implicit in many of these portrayals, as women were shown in intimate poses with their female friends, or were shown cross-dressed in male attires, such as in the “Women of the Zenana Playing Holi” (1760-70), wherein some women are spotted in turbans celebrating Holi in their private, inner quarters. “Undertones of desire and sexual liberty are evident” as Radhika Iyengar notes. This motif of cross-dressing could also be seen in “Two Ladies Embracing at a Jharoka” (1820-30). Here a woman dressed in a male garb of bottle-green turban and a canary-yellow peshwaj embraces another woman draped in ghagra-blouse; the two women are looking at each other with a seductive fantasy.

Apart from these paintings, the Rajput miniature paintings of Rasikapriya, the ritikavya (mannered poetry) composed by the court poet Kesavadas in 1591 CE, and the Gita Govinda illustrations from the Pahari school reflect often the passionate and sensual act of love-making showing the divine couples Radha and Krishna engaged in copulation in various poses and postures as described in the Kama-Sutra. These paintings depict the Sambhoga Sringara Bhava (the sentiment and emotion of union), and highlight the spiritual philosophy of Bhakti. In the representation of women in the Deccan school of miniatures, the sensitivity is heightened by the rich attention paid to the jewellery and the detailing of clothes. In the Mughal school, interestingly, the paintings depicting scenes from inside the zenana could be interpreted along queer lines. What is interesting is how these paintings, so elaborately and intimately designed in such small spaces, bring to life the theme of sensuousness and eroticism in art, and celebrate desire and love, with an attention on the body and the physicality, particularly of women, thereby immortalising the representation of desire and sensuality in the art history of the subcontinent.

References:

Losty, Jeremiah P. Court & Courtship: Indian Miniatures in the TAPI Collection. Niyogi Books, 2020.
Iyengar, Radhika. “This collection of miniature paintings gives a peek into the sensuality of 16th-19th century Indian art”. Vogue, 2020, https://www.vogue.in/culture-and-living/content/court-and-courtship-collection-of-miniature-paintings-sensuality-in-indian-art.
Chhiller, Chetan. “Idealised Sexualities in Rajput Miniature Paintings of Rasikapriya”. Art, Design and Society, edited by Anupa Pande and Savita Kumari. Macmillan Education, 2021, https://www.academia.edu/42626041/Idealised_Sexualities_in_Rajput_Miniature_Paintings_of_Rasikapriya.
Kumari, Savita. “HOMOEROTICISM IN MUGHAL INDIA: FLUIDITY OF SEXUALITY, ISLAMIC ART AND BEYOND”. Dastaan, 2022, https://dastaanjmc.wordpress.com/2022/09/27/homoeroticism-in-mughal-india-fluidity-of-sexuality-islamic-art-and-beyond/.
Salar Jung Museum. “Women in Deccani Painting”. Google Arts & Culture, https://artsandculture.google.com/story/women-in-deccani-painting-salar-jung-museum/KwXBj1uyVCU9Ag?hl=en. Accessed 19 Jan. 2023.

Images

Rasikapriyā, Hidden Love in Union, Mewār, c.1630-40, Opaque watercolor and ink on paper, page 20 x 20 cm, National Museum, Delhi, India. From: Harsha V.Dehejia. Rasikapriya: Ritikavya of Keshavadas in Ateliers of Love. New Delhi: D.K.Printworld, 2013. From: Chhiller, Chetan. “Idealised Sexualities in Rajput Miniature Paintings of Rasikapriya”. Art, Design and Society, edited by Anupa Pande and Savita Kumari. Macmillan Education, 2021, https://www.academia.edu/42626041/Idealised_Sexualities_in_Rajput_Miniature_Paintings_of_Rasikapriya.

Radha and Krishna in a Bower: A Folio from the Gita Govinda, Attributable to a master of the first generation after Nainsukh, Pahari, Kangra or Guler, circa 1780. Sotheby’s, https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2011/c-welch-part-ii-l11228/lot.66.html.