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Krishna being dressed in women’s clothes for the spring festival Holi
c. 1790
- Medium
- Ink and gum tempera on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Overall: 19 x 27.4 cm (7 1/2 x 10 13/16 in.)
- Culture
- Northern India, Pahari kingdoms
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Edward L. Whittemore Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
The Hindu festival of Holi, which celebrates the arrival of spring, is a time of play that encourages reckless joy and abandon. The women cheekily dress Krishna as one of them. Radha, his beloved, takes away his crown and flute.
This unfinished work reveals the process of creating an Indian painting. An experienced member of the atelier would have made the drawing and written the color notations before giving it to a colorist to paint.
