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Sheetaladevi: The Smallpox Goddess (recto), from a Kalighat album
c. 1890
- Medium
- Gum tempera, graphite, ink, and tin on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Secondary Support: 46.9 x 29.8 cm (18 7/16 x 11 3/4 in.); Painting only: 45.5 x 27.7 cm (17 15/16 x 10 7/8 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
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Sheetala, the smallpox goddess, is simultaneously benevolent and dangerous: she can both protect and infect, bless and curse devotees with smallpox and other diseases. Persons scarred by smallpox are believed to have been graced by her. She is appeased so that she does not infect her worshippers. Her name, Sheetala, “Cool One,” refers to her birth out of a cooled sacrificial fire. The rippled curtains above her are suggestive of theatrical tableau and Sheetalapala (The Drama of Sheetala) that was performed in Bengal. She sits astride her vehicle (vahana), the donkey, regarded as an inauspicious animal.
