Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.

Todi Ragini, from a Ragamala Series

c. 1750–75

Medium: Gum tempera and gold on paper
Classification: Painting
Dimensions: Image: 21.4 x 13 cm (8 7/16 x 5 1/8 in.); Border: 28.7 x 22.3 cm (11 5/16 x 8 3/4 in.)
Culture: Northwestern India, Rajasthan, Bundi or Uniara, 18th century
Museum: Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
Credit line: Gift of Dr. Norman Zaworski
Rights: Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it: Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed

About this work

In the ragamala system, male ragas are "married" to female raginis. Todi Ragini is a "wife" of Hindola Raga, the name of a scene that features the male lover or lovers on a swing. Both Todi and Hindola are meant to explore the moods of springtime. Ragamala verses describe Todi as a woman with sharp eyes and a slim "extremely tender body, radiant as the frost" and smeared with saffron and camphor from Kashmir. She is said to "push back a deer from the edge of a forest glade."