Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c8.49

c8.49

Yet some of the single detached figures are extremely good, and show a great advance upon the art of Bharhut, though the style is similar. Plate XXX. is an illustration of a female figure, singularly beautiful in movement and strongly modelled, which forms a bracket on the right-hand side of the same gateway. The style of it shows no trace of the Hellenic tradition, nor of the idealism which developed in later Indian sculpture. It is a piece of simple, forceful realism by Indian sculptors, before any attempt was made by them to idealise the human form. Nevertheless, it would be difficult to find among the Gandharan sculptures anything to surpass it, either in technique or in artistic feeling.