Ajanta: The Colour and Monochrome Reproductions of the Ajanta Frescoes Based on Photography v1.c4.37

v1.c4.37

Let me dwell for a moment on a point of difference; the painting of the nude human form. The painting of the nude is very rare in the late medieval painting of Europe most akin to these Indian frescoes. But with the Renaissance it soon becomes the supreme medium of expression for painters as for sculptors. Were it not for the example of Greek scuplture, this cult of the nude form would probably never have arisen. But having discovered the infinite expressiveness of the body in its ‘naked glory’, the artists of Europe have made it their central study. Yet there has always been something which is inevitably a little artificial in this study, seeing that it has been pursued among people unused to dispense with clothing. It is not something suggested by the sights of everyday life. There is, indeed, something that a detached observer might find at once a little ludicrous and a little pathetic in the labours of the orthodox life class, with its rings of earnest students drawing from a model not occupied in some natural action but posed in an arrest of movement.