Indian Sculpture c8.242

c8.242

The figure is inserted into flower-shaped sockets, and the upper socket into the jaw of a lion head. This vertical combination in the highest relief is set against horizontal fillets, mouldings and recesses, each of which is decorated, either (1) by devices cut flatly and without any modelling at right angles against the ground, so that a black and white pattern results (wave pattern, chess-board pattern, etc.); (2) by a figured frieze, each figure modelled with a melting softness; (3) by devices which are partly modelled and partly linearised; of these one type (a) combines perpendicularly incised lines with schematically modelled surfaces, so that the lines appear black against the modelled surface (lotus-petal moulding and fillet of rosettes and lozenges), and the other (b) decomposes an originally modelled context into a stricty geometrical order of triangles, joined in the surface or at angles (inverted triangles, i.e. lotus petal devices, third row from bottom).