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Jan 24, 2005

Mother Goddess

AD 400s-500s

Northwestern India, Rajasthan, Gupta Period, 5th-6th Century

Schist

Overall: 79.4 x 23.2 cm (31 1/4 x 9 1/8 in.)

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1970.12

Location

243 Indian and Southeast Asian

Did you know?

The mother goddess cult can be traced back as far as the Indus Valley civilization.

Description

Sets of seven or eight mother goddesses were installed in side chambers near the entrance to Hindu temples. From one of the most naturalistic and charming sets, this mother attentively grasps the wrist of her toddler to gently guide him, while smiling lovingly and patiently at him. The simplicity of garments and ornament is characteristic of sculpture of the 5th and 6th centuries, and the naturalistic qualities of this work from northwestern India suggest connections with the Greco-Roman styles of Gandhara, in present-day Pakistan.

Provenance

1970–

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Citations

Agrawala, R. C. “Some More Unpublished Sculptures from Rajasthan.” Lalit Kala, No. 10 (October 1961). Mentioned and Reproduced: fig. 14

Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1970." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 58, no. 2 (1971): 22-71. Mentioned: p. 71, no. 165 www.jstor.org

Pal, Pratapaditya. “Some Rajasthani Sculptures of the Gupta Period”, Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin, Oberlin College (Winter 1971), pp. 105-118.

Harle, J. C. Gupta Sculpture: Indian Sculpture of the Fourth to the Sixth Centuries A.D. Oxford [England]: Clarendon Press, 1974. Mentioned and Reproduced: p. 26, pl. 91, p. 49

Czuma, Stanislaw. “Mathura Sculpture in the Cleveland Museum Collection.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 64, no. 3, 1977, pp. 83–114. Mentioned and Reproduced: p. 111, fig. 42 www.jstor.org

The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. Reproduced: p. 292 archive.org

Schastok, Sara L. The Śāmalājī Sculptures and 6th Century Art in Western India. Leiden: Brill, 1985. Mentioned: p. 83; Reproduced: fig. 56, plate XXXIII

Cunningham, Michael R., Stanislaw J. Czuma, Anne E. Wardwell, and J. Keith Wilson. Masterworks of Asian Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1998. Reproduced: pp. 134-135

Czuma, Stanislaw, "Great Acquisitions and Southeast Asian Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art," Orientations, An Issue in Honour of Sherman E. Lee (Jan/Feb 2005), vol. 36, no. 1. Reproduced: p. 84

Franklin, David and C. Griffith Mann. Treasures from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2012. Reproduced: pp. 62-63

Liebert, Emily, Nadiah Rivera Fellah, and William Griswold. Picturing Motherhood Now. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2021. Mentioned & Reproduced: pp. 10–11, fig. 2

Exhibition history

Year in Review: 1970. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 10-March 7, 1971).

Streams and Mountains Without End: Asian Art and the Legacy of Sherman E. Lee at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 27-August 23, 2009).

Cite this page

{{cite web|title=Mother Goddess|url=https://clevelandart.org/art/1970.12|year=AD 400s-500s|access-date=25 March 2023|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

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Mother Goddess

Mother Goddess

Northwestern India, Rajasthan, Gupta Period, 5th-6th Century

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