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Krishna Steals the Clothes of the Milkmaids and Expounds on the Virtue of Trees, from a Braj Bhagavata Purana
c. 1650
- Medium
- Gum tempera on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Overall: 21 x 33.5 cm (8 1/4 x 13 3/16 in.)
- Culture
- Central India, Madhya Pradesh, Malwa
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Robert S. Walzer
- 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
When the milkmaids went to the Yamuna River to bathe, Krishna stealthily took their clothes and hid them in the treetops. Here, the blue-skinned Krishna sits in a tree playing his flute, waiting for the women to come to him. True devotees must shed all worldly inhibitions and approach their god with nothing to hide.
The narrow register above shows Krishna expounding on the virtue of trees to the other cowherds. The illustration closely follows the extensive text, written on the back in the vernacular language of Braj, even down to the detail of how they drank the sweet water of the Yamuna River.
