The Metamorphoses of Indian Gods

It was probably a priest or an agent searching in Louis XV’s orders for exotica for the Royal Library, who picked up a collection of 105 Indian miniatures and carried it to Paris from where it made its way to the collection of enlightened Polish King, Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski. Painted in gouache on handmade paper before the middle of the eighteenth century somewhere in the present State of Andhra, the paintings cover the major Hindu pantheon and some of the local divinities, often breaking into narrative sequences. Ms Maria Jakimowicz-Shah, Indologist and art historian, reproduces almost all of these paintings, about a quarter of them in colour, with elaborate annotations and a scholarly introduction underlining the characteristics of the this little known school of art and the setting that produced these paintings. The paintings are the product of mature tradition and a highly sophisticate style that draws on several conventions, folk, Mughal, and old Vijayanagar included.