Four-armed goddess, with hearts in margin
Unknown Artist
1900s
Medium
ink and color on paper
Dimensions
36.2 × 27 cm
Classification
Painting
Department
Indian and Southeast Asian Art
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Gift of Pamela Elizabeth Ward in loving memory of her parents, William E. and Evelyn Svec Ward
Accession Number
2005.86
About this artwork
This goddess holds a lotus flower and a discus, along with two other unidentified objects. Historically, Madhubani paintings were murals created with brushes made of bamboo and cotton. They ornamented domestic spaces on the occasion of a festival or rite of passage in a woman's life, such as a birth or a wedding. In the wake of a drought in 1966, the All India Handicrafts Board encouraged women of the Mithila region make paintings on paper, so they could sell them and help support their communit...