A BRONZE CAST SCULPTURE DEPICTING TWO MYTHICAL ANIMALS IN COMBAT, INDIA, DECCAN, BIJAPUR OR GOLCONDA, 17TH CENTURY

The present lot is part of a wider corpus of metal zoomorphic objects from the Deccan. This sculpture is comparable to that published in Haidar and Sardar 2015, p.206, cat.no. 99. Haidar and Sardar, following Mark Zebrowski, attributed the piece to Golconda due to postural parallels with contemporaneous depictions of animals in combat, specifically the yali with one raised paw and elephant with a rearing trunk on a relief wall carving near the Patancheru Gate (Darwaza) of circa 1559 in Golconda. Another granite relief from this monument is illustrated in Zebrowski 1997, p.103, p.112. The yali motif is not restricted to Golconda but seen throughout the Deccan, as evidenced by the plaster wall relief of a yali with one raised paw in a sixteenth-century plaster architectural frieze shown by Zebrowksi 1997 on p.103, pl.108.

Another famous example is the gilt-copper dagger hilt from the Stuart Cary Welch collection, sold in these rooms, 6 April 2011, lot 103. This is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv.no. 2011.236). Two swords with related but simpler imagery are in the British Museum and the Government Museum, Bikaner, as published in Zebrowski 1997, p.102, pl.107. See also Stuart Cary Welch, India: Art and Culture 1300-1900, 1985, p.48, cat.no.17.