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The Heroine Who Waits Anxiously for Her Absent Lover: Utka Nayika
c. 1760–65
- Medium
- Gum tempera and gold on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Page: 26.3 x 17.8 cm (10 3/8 x 7 in.); Image: 25.2 x 16.6 cm (9 15/16 x 6 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- Northern India, Pahari kingdoms
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Purchase and partial gift from the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection; Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund
- 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
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
In the hilly and verdant landscape all around her, birds and animals are all in pairs—even many of the trees have doubles—but she remains alone, waiting on a bed of leaves for her lover to arrive. She has no way of knowing when he will come, like the devotee has no way to know when god will arrive and bring salvation and bliss.
