Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c7.279

c7.279

Hindu artists have always been past-masters in the art of the grotesque, and in the quaint conception of Ganesha, the son of Siva, god of worldly wisdom, patron of merchants and schoolboys, and guardian of households, they have full scope for their fantastic imagination. The sculpture from Java (Plate XXVII.) now in the Ethnographic Museum at Leyden, is a masterpiece of its kind, supremely delightful in the powerful and finished modelling of the squat, obese figure possessed of an elephant’s head and a Falstaffian human body. The head and trunk and the podgy hands and feet, especially, are perfect in their technique. The row of skulls at Ganesha’s feet is a reminder of his descent from the Great Destroyer, Siva.