A FOLIO FROM THE DISPERSED "PALAM" BHAGAVATA PURANA BOOK 10: KRISHNA DRAWS KAMSA'S BOW

Good and stable overall condition as viewed. Wear to the edges as visible in catalogue illustration. Abrasions to pigment on some of the figures and some of their costumes also visible in catalogue illustration. The red background is slightly lighter than in the catalogue illustration. Inscription in devanagari on verso. This lot is exhibited in a temporary frame.
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This painting and the following two lots belong to the well-known and highly important pre-Mughal Bhagavata Purana series circa 1520-40 from the Delhi-Agra area in Northern India which depict chapters from Book 10 of the Bhagavata Purana - Divine Tales of the Supreme Lord - illustrating the life and exploits of Krishna in his triumphs of love and battle.   Other folios from this widely dispersed series of perhaps 200 known leaves may be found in some of the great public and private collections of Indian art around the world.  They comprise a key to our understanding of the development of Indian painting from its earliest pre-Mughal origins to the arrival of the Mughals in the early years of the 16th Century.  

In the upper register Krishna stepping high, powerfully draws the bowstring of Kamsa's wondrous bow breaking and snapping it to the amazement of King Kamsa's heavily armored guard. The scene is set on a brilliant cinnabar-colored red background with an undulating dark blue sky above.  In the bottom register Krishna and Balarama subdue and defeat Kamsa, his wrestlers and his entourage, whose reinforcements rushing in from the right arrive to battle - but to no avail. 

A number of the folios from this series are inscribed in ink with two names “Nana” and “Mithiram” which had previously been considered by some scholars to be the two principal artists collaborating on the series.  However, analysis by Daniel Ehnbom has defined at least 10 anonymous painters contributing to the series. These are referred to by Ehnbom as Painters A-J.

Refer to Sotheby's New York, March 17, 2015, Lot 1110-1112; Edwin Binney 3rd, Rajput Miniatures from the Collection of Edwin Binney 3rd, Portland, 1968, p. 4-5, cat. 1c; Daniel Ehnbom, Masters of the Dispersed Bhagavata Purana, p.77-88 (in M. C. Beach, E. Fischer and B. N. Goswamy, Masters of Indian Painting 1100-1650, Artibus Asiae Sup. 48/I, 2011); Daniel Ehnbom, An Analysis and Reconstruction of the Dispersed Bhagavata Purana from the Caurapancasika Group, The University of Chicago, 1984, p. 235; Darielle Mason (ed.) (essay by John Seyller), Intimate Worlds: Indian Painting from the Alvin O. Bellak Collection, Philadelphia, 2001, pp. 48-49; and Amy G. Poster, Realms of Heroism: Indian paintings at the Brooklyn Museum, New York,  1994, pp. 53 - 55.