Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c10.36

c10.36

When the canons of Indian art were finally fixed as part of a religious ritual, portraiture as a distinct branch of sculpture seems to have become almost extinct. In images of the gods the whole aim was to suggest a type of face as far as possible impersonal—that is, to suppress all the details indicative of human individuality, instead of creating a type of ideal human beauty, as in Greek art. But there is a great deal of Indian sculpture, especially in Java, in which a distinct ethnical type is taken for the head of a Buddha, Bodhisattva, or Hindu demi-god, just as in the mediæval art of Europe royal personages and dignitaries of the Church suggested the types of Christian saints.