Jatayu hinders Ravana’s chariot trying to prevent Sita’s abduction (recto), from a Kalighat album
Shri Gobinda Chandra Roy (Indian, active late 1800s)
c. 1890
- Medium
- woodcut
- Classification
- Dimensions
- Secondary Support: 49.8 x 31.4 cm (19 5/8 x 12 3/8 in.); image only: 40.6 x 26.5 cm (16 x 10 7/16 in.)
- Culture
- Eastern India, Bengal, Kolkata, Kalighat
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Gift of William E. Ward in memory of his wife, Evelyn Svec Ward
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Adult profiles and older: its museum's description or title mentions violence, death or gore. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
As ten-headed Ravana successfully flies away with his quarry, Princess Sita, the demon king is stopped by the great vulture Jatayu, an ally to Sita’s husband Rama.
Closely resembling the Bengali paintings of the same subject, a woodcut print was a less expensive alternative to a painting. Almost any resident of the burgeoning city of Calcutta (now Kolkata) could afford to acquire one. Woodcuts such as this were made on paper that Christian missionaries intended for the production of Bibles. However, local artists used it to mass-produce popular Hindu imagery.
