The Hindu Temple v2.c11.s1.37

v2.c11.s1.37

In the images occupying the reveals or recesses on either side of an offset, as for example on most of the Khajuraho temples (Pls. XX, XIII), the relation is given form of the volume of the figure to its axis on the one hand and to the space which the image is made to fill on the other. But even though the image may not be so favourably placed as to display the complete possibilities of its plastic volume in space and yet being part of the dynamic mass of the temple, such figures as are carved with their backs to the wall, in front view, appear to have arrived on their consoles driven thither by the impact of the buttress behind them (Pl. XLIV). There, even though the image stands straight or is seated (Pl. VI) in rigid symmetry, its volume is yet disposed in dynamic balance around it; the chest of the standing figures curving forward, has its counter weight in the roundness of the hips so that these figures with their backs to the wall, seen as modelled volumes, seem to swing to and fro from their feet upwards in ever varying curves as if rebounding from renewed contacts with the wall and its compacted energy.