Divine Beauty on a Peacock Ride

This beautiful image, a brilliant work of pure creative imagination and by the most skilled hands of an exceptionally talented artist, represents divine beauty in a human frame. Unlike those who seek help from a myth, legend, folk or popular tradition, or from a literary classic borrowing from it a fiction, some fact, or a situation for a theme or for appeal, the sculptor of this wood-piece has explored his mind discovering in it its own image of beauty, just for beauty’s sake, without intermixing it with a theme and without shifting the focus away from the face or figure, and packed it into a piece of wood, and there emerged this magnificent piece of art. A magic of rare device, in this wood-statue, form, medium, or that which eye views, is just the mere refuge of the vision that was never born in eye. It brings to eye that which was not its theme, perhaps a thing from other domain – the beauty that descends from the realms of divine seeking a form on the land of man.

Whatever the young maiden seems to enact, or that which looks like a theme : lifting her leg to mount the bird or feeding it with a fresh green food plant, or just sporting with it, seems to be the artist’s manipulation for discovering different profiles of the figure of the young woman and revealing its greater beauty. Beauty enshrines a figure’s anatomy : its modeling, plasticity, proportions, fluidity, curves and curls, but not to such level as reveals the maiden’s figure in this statue. Her entire form, the figure, its moves and gestures, contours to which her body-parts, ornaments and ensemble curve, form of coiffure, projected and subdued parts and even peep-through areas, besides the subordinate imagery : the peacock, its majestic tail, trotting feet and beak holding or sporting with a food-plant, and even the pedestal the figure has been installed on, reveals rare beauty and is the source of perpetual delight. Strangely, every part of her figure reveals rare beauty but sensualism in the least, not even her fascinatingly modeled breasts clad in an as temptingly designed stana-patta. Instead of, her figure abounds in sublime grace and inspires veneration.

The artist has conceived his figure of the young maiden with a round face which a celestial ‘bhava’ – pious sentiment, enshrines. Her half-shut lotus eyes suggest that she is absorbed within and the outward world has lost to her its relevance. A beautifully modeled sharp nose, lotus petals’ like carved eyes, arched eye-brows, elegantly shaped cheeks and an as elegantly aligning chin, well defined neck and a broad forehead with rings of hair framing it, all have been carved with utmost care and very sensitive mind. Corresponding to her round face the artist has conceived a pot-like styled coiffure. Lest the roundness of the face and the coiffure merged or tired the viewing eye by their symmetry, he has introduced in the intermediary space a ‘karnaphool’, a flower-like designed ear-ornament to relieve the monotony of repeat forms. The straight stretch of her arms, the right one, shot skywards, and the left, aligning to it, earthwards, both conjointly creating on one hand a delightful geometry, and on the other, so moved her breasts, the right one swung upwards, and the left, downwards, that they revealed far greater beauty.

This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr. Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of literature and is the author of numerous books on Indian art and culture. Dr. Daljeet is the curator of the Miniature Painting Gallery, National Museum, New Delhi. They have both collaborated together on a number of books.

---

Free Shipping. Delivered by to all international destinations within 3 to 5 days, fully insured.

---