Jain Miniature Paintings from Western India c6.217

c6.217

As we have already said elsewhere Western Indian art is fundamentally linear, and, therefore, these early palm-leaf miniatures lack depth and appear flat. In certain miniatures, however, crude modelling is attempted by thickening the outline of certain parts of the figure, or by the application of slight colour washes. The miniatures have a restricted colour scheme consisting of vermillion, yellow, blue, white and rarely green. The background is generally brick-red, close to vermilion. "This characteristic persists throughout the entire history of the art, although in paper period two kinds of red are employed for the background in different manuscripts, the old brick-red, or a vermilion and a red containing more purple, and the red is often displaced in whole or part in blue²¹."