Mahabalipuram - Painting in Stone

I revisited Mahabalipuram for a few hours last week. The place merits a lot more time than that....

Let us first take a look at the famous 'Taddei Tondo' by Michelangelo:



A description from the Great Artists volume on Mike:

"In relief sculptures, the figures are never fully in the round but remain attached to a flat background so the sculptor has to create the illusion of full roundness against a relatively two dimensional surface. Michelangelo understood this very well and approached relief sculpture rather like painting. ...The figure of the Christ child is carved quite deeply with strong clear outlines, which make it stand out from the background. The Virgin and St. John are less deeply carved and in places seem almost to have been drawn onto the stone... In the background, Michelangelo has also roughened the surface of the stone to create a sense of depth...(it is almost as if) Michelangelo could really draw in stone."

This technique (minus roughing up the background) can also be admired in the Gates of Paradise by Ghiberti who lived half a century before Michelangelo:



And now, let us examine some Mahabalipuram granite reliefs - 'Laxmi bathed by elephants' and a portion of 'Krishna lifting Govardhana':





Just see those elephants - elegantly outlined but kept out of focus and pushed to the background - and the cattle - just about indicated; and how chisel marks rough up the vacant areas. Both works predate Michelangelo and Ghiberti by well over 800 years.

Here is another group; its three dimensionality reminds me of a Bellini altarpiece. Note the textured background from which the fugures emerge... And the foreground figure to the goddess's right, is he about to cut off his own head as an offering??





The above masterpieces don't seem to have had precedents in Indian art in the way they deal with background figures and depth. Strangely, India never really built on what they achieved - even exponents of our great painting schools - Mughal, Kangra etc - only used diminution of size to indicate objects in the background, not putting things out of focus. Indeed, in Mahabalipuram itself, most other reliefs seem 'conventionally Indian' in their treatment of picture depth. For instance, see this famous Mahishasura battle scene.



Even the celebrated 'Arjuna's penance' keeps everything in focus (btw, can you spot the Kinnaras there?):


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The 13 centuries old Mahabalipuram Shore Temple remains, easily, the most elegantly proportioned stone temple in South India - this despite practically all of its decorative sculpture having gotten eaten away by the elements... And it is such a pinnacle of achievement that the only way for future architects was downwards. In hindsight, even the great Cholas, for all their powerful intent, only delayed the inevitable.

And the loss of the sculptures on the shore temple might not really have been that big a loss. For here is a just-about-surviving relief from there. A remarkably flattened out Holy Family (aka 'Somaskanda') group. Parvati is poking at a very stiff Siva's shoulder, her hand looking curiously like a cobra's hood ... well, the hood-like hand might just as well, belong to Siva himself!



Around Mahabalipuram are many workshops bulk producing granite sculptures and idols. Tools are high tech, demand appears strong and business appears to be flourishing. I caught sight of a dozen foot tall Revanta (a Kalki-esque sword wielding, horse-riding deity) - a scaled up copy of a sculpture I remember seeing at the Patan step well in far away Gujarat - in an advanced stage of finishing.