Indian Sculpture c8.304

c8.304

The utmost profusion of detail, in the mountain scene in the upper part of the middle panel, achieves a landscape-pattern with a combination of scrolls, animal and plant-figures (for instance, scroll-work and serpents, on the left). Its light and dark effect confines it to the surface on the whole and in spite of the deeply undercut single devices. The cattle below, and the shepherds arrayed in rows, also suggest a survival of, and return to, a popular way of representation (Figs. 17, 22). The Vṛkṣakā on the left, with the spiralic movement of body and apparel, shows the antagonism between the intention of the craftsman to give the utmost effect to three-dimensional volume, and the actual relation of sculpture and surface. Dissolved into more or less broad facets, the walls of the temple subsume and incorporate into their surfaces all the vagaries of the three-dimensional figures.