Sadanga of Indian painting
Around the 1st century BC the
Sadanga or Six Limbs of Indian Painting, were evolved, a series of canons laying down the main principles of the art.
[2] Vatsyayana, who lived during the third century A.D., enumerates these in his
Kamasutra having extracted them from still more ancient works.
These 'Six Limbs' have been translated as follows:
[2]
- Rupabheda The knowledge of appearances.
- Pramanam Correct perception, measure and structure.
- Bhava Action of feelings on forms.
- Lavanya Yojanam Infusion of grace, artistic representation.
- Sadrisyam Similitude.
- Varnikabhanga Artistic manner of using the brush and colours. (Tagore.)
The subsequent development of painting by the Buddhists indicates
that these ' Six Limbs ' were put into practice by Indian artists, and
are the basic principles on which their art was founded.
Genres of Indian painting
Painting of Mysore style during tippu sultan period
Indian paintings can be broadly classified as murals and miniatures.
Murals are large works executed on the walls of solid structures, as in
the
Ajanta Caves and the Kailashnath temple.
Miniature paintings are executed on a very small scale for books or albums on perishable material such as paper and cloth. The Palas of
Bengal
were the pioneers of miniature painting in India. The art of miniature
painting reached its glory during the Mughal period. The tradition of
miniature paintings was carried forward by the painters of different
Rajasthani schools of painting like the Bundi, Kishangarh, Jaipur,
Marwar and Mewar. The Ragamala paintings also belong to this school, as
does the
Company painting produced for British clients under the
British Raj.
If Neanderthal man created any form of art, no traces of it have yet been found. But with the arrival of modern man, or Homo sapiens sapiens, the human genius for image-making becomes abundantly clear.
In
the recesses of caves, people begin to decorate the rock face with an
important theme in their daily lives, the bison and reindeer which are
their prey as Ice Age
hunters. And sculptors carve portable images of another predominant
interest of mankind - the swelling curves of the female form,
emphasizing the fertility on which the survival of the tribe depends.
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Cave paintings: from 31,000 years ago
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Prehistoric cave paintings have been discovered in many parts of the world, from Europe and Africa to Australia.
Africa has some of the earliest paintings and rock engravings to have
been securely dated. Nearly 30,000 years old, they are discovered in
1969 on the rock face in a cave near Twyfelfontein in Namibia.
But the most numerous and the most sophisticated of prehistoric
paintings are on the walls of caves in southwest France and northern
Spain.
About 150 painted caves have been discovered in this region. Perhaps the most startling of all are the paintings in Chauvet cave, found as recently as 1994 and thought to be as much as 31,000 years old. But far better known, as yet, are the glories of Altamira and Lascaux.
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| The walls and ceilings of these caves are covered in paintings, with
shades of red, brown, yellow and black created from powdered minerals,
probably mixed with animal blood and fat. The subjects are mainly the
animals of the chase - bison, wild cattle, horses and deer. Many of the
paintings are d |
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