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Todi Ragini, from a Ragamala Series

c. 1755

Medium: Gum tempera and gold on paper
Classification: Painting
Dimensions: Page: 28.6 x 19 cm (11 1/4 x 7 1/2 in.); Miniature: 23.5 x 15.3 cm (9 1/4 x 6 in.)
Culture: Eastern India, Bengal, Murshidabad, 18th century
Museum: Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
Credit line: Gift in honor of Madeline Neves Clapp; Gift of Mrs. Henry White Cannon by exchange; Bequest of Louise T. Cooper; Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund; From the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection
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

Ragamala paintings were recognized as being associated with a season and time of day. Evoking a late morning in spring, here a young woman beguiles deer from the woodlands with her music to prevent them from destroying the crops in the field. The saturated hues and romantic idealization of the scene continue idioms begun in the Mughal court that were disseminated to regional centers of patronage such as Murshidabad. The inscription at the top of this page identifies the name, ragini todi, in Arabic script, which suggests that this ragamala series was made for a Muslim patron.