Indian Sculpture c6.s10.t1.3

c6.s10.t1.3

The same motifs abound in the sculptures of Mysore. Their range is further enlarged by friezes filled with manifold scenes. Although carved in very high relief, and frequently altogether in the round, they appear pressed between the two surfaces of the relief, and are tied down by ponderously exuberant ornamentation (Fig. 109). Even in large panels and in the case of images and bracket figures, where one human-divine figure predominates, it is rigid with, and suffocated by, a meticulous burden of carvings, as artistically meaningless as they are technically elaborate (Fig. 111). In this exhibition of the skill of the stone-carver mediæval sculpture has reached its lowest level. There, in the carvings of the twelfth century—time has hardened them to metallic appearance—the relics of Indian plasticity are seized by torpor and by the exasperation of intricate artifices.