A painting in ink and opaque watercolor on cloth from Rajasthan, India, dated circa 1800, held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, under accession number 57.70.6. It depicts the Ramayana episode in which Hanuman, sent to fetch a healing herb from a Himalayan mountain for the mortally wounded Lakshmana and unable to identify the single herb needed among the many growing there, instead grows to enormous size, tears the entire mountaintop from the earth, and carries it flying through the sky back to the battlefield in Lanka. The composition, Hanuman airborne with the mountain raised on his palm, is the standard iconographic type for this episode, repeated across Indian sculpture and painting from the medieval period onward.
Facts
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Lakshmana directly: "mountain for the mortally wounded Lakshmana and unable to identify the single herb needed among the many growing there, instead grows to enormous size, tears the entire mountaintop from the earth..."
This source names Rajasthan directly: "and opaque watercolor on cloth from Rajasthan, India, dated circa 1800, held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, under accession number 57.70.6."
Belongs to Tradition
Depicts
The painting's sole subject, shown flying with the medicinal mountain raised on his palm, the Met's own accessioned painting of this standard episode.
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