indian art - miniatures - archecticture - vedic philosophy
 
 
   

 
Classical - Mewari - Gita-Govinda - Series One
 
Plate 19 - "Pratipade... sa virahe tave dina."  

 

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"She cries out the words,
'Madhava, fall at your feet.
When your face turns,
Even the cool rays of the moon
Burn my body in flames.'"


The soft imagery of the preceding verse where she draws a picture of Krsna is replaced here by an intensity of yearning through the sense of sound and touch. Radha is now prostrate emotionally before Krsna as Krsna was before her in His mood of remorse.
 
The artist repeats the pictorial refrain of Krsna and the saki but places the two in a corner. Radha appears several times. First she is in the arched bower preventing her companions from touching her impassioned body. The moonlight shimmers in the background and its rays fall upon the banks of the Jamuna and the lightly drawn bushes. The moonlight and the companions are of little comfort to Radha. Her cry is for Madhava at whose feet she will fall once, twice, and again. Three Radhas in different poses of supplication bow before a benign, all bejewelled Krsna against a dark background. The phrase 'tava carane patita-ham' is powerfully pictorially recreated. And she worships Him and meditates upon Him in another bower, with Kama shooting his arrows.
 
The passionate intensity of the sound and the scorching touch of cool moon rays is beautifully and effectively recreated. Light and shadows are as purposefully employed ir the painting as in the poetry. The painting evokes an aura response, rather than a purely visual one.