The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

328 THE HINDU RENAISSANCE
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line of the silhouette provided by this dehanchement,
together with the exquisite gestures of the
hands, that imparts such a feeling of tremulous
movement to the form. The actual exaggerations
of features and proportions, such as the
lotiform eyes and leonine torso, are the same
that had been employed for more than a millennium
of Indian art. The peculiar combination
of all
these traditional elements, subordinated
to a kind of elegant attenuation and litheness, is
a moving characteristic of all the great South
Indian bronze images.
Like some of the masterpieces of the Gupta
Period, the icons of this type appear as marvellous
realizations of a moment between movement
and tranquillity, together with a suggestion
of a quality of breathless rapture denoted by the
gestures and the tension of the form. These
statues of Siva saints might be regarded as personifications
of the quality of devotion. They
reveal the ecstatic readiness of the devotee for
his divinity, the whole figure seemingly vibrating
in response to the divine communication.
Although differentiated as types and by attributes,
they are really not so much 'portraits' of
individual Hindu seers as they are concrete
presentations of the idea of bhakti in plastic
form, just as a Byzantine mosaic of a saint is not
a likeness but a symbol of dedication to God.
An extraordinary South Indian bronze is the
image of Parvati in the Freer Gallery in Washington
[257], where it is dated in the eleventh or
twelfth century a.d. Like many of the South
Indian metal statues, this was a processional
image, as may be seen by the lugs for the insertion
of poles at the base. The figure has an
extreme attenuation of nine thalams to the total
height; this svelteness, together with the elongated
limbs, give the goddess an air of aristocracy
and grace, suggestive of the refinement of
figures in the Mannerist style in Europe, for the
reason that this quality is achieved by a similar
exaggeration of bodily proportions. As may be
seen by an examination of the torso, the body is
animated by the same inner torsion that imparts
such dynamic aliveness to the classic figure of
the Sarichi tree-goddesses. The roundness of
the breasts, corresponding to the traditional
description as 'golden urns', is emphasized by
the cord that passes through the narrow channel
between them. In spite of the hieratic proportions
and the archaic rendering of the features,
this statue has the same feeling of lightness and
animation that characterizes all the great masterpieces
of South Indian metalwork.
A quite different type of bronze is the
statuette of Kali from Tanjore, now at
Kansas City [258]. Kali the 'Black One' is the
256. Bronze Siva saint,
perhaps Sundaramurtiswami, from South India.
Kansas City, James Baldwin