A double-sided illustration to a Bhagavata Purana series, book 10, recto: King Kamsa is approached by Nanda and the Gopas verso: in a forest setting Nanda and Vasudeva exchange greetings and then depart, India, Mewar, circa 1620-30

The recto depicts Nanda and a group of gopas making their way towards King Kamsa seated on his throne inside a covered pavilion. Two attendants wait on the king and a courtier stands below them. A herdsman drives a pair of bullocks who pull a milk cart laden with pots, while other gopas carry pots suspended from poles. Inscriptions above the heads of the two central characters serve as identification. A peacock flaps his wings on Kamsa’s palace roof.

The verso shows Nanda accompanied by four gopas, greeting and embracing Vasudeva – the meeting shown against an unpainted ground. They are depicted twice, greeting and then departing in opposite directions. Here too, the main characters are identified with inscriptions in Devanagari script. Their meeting occurs in a spare, open landscape with stylised trees seen in the distance. Small, colorful wildflowers dot the foreground. A streak of indigo blue connotes the sky.

Double-sided full-page illustrations of this important potli (horizontal format) Bhagavata Purana are extremely rare, making our folio a work of extreme significance. More typical of this series are folia with mainly text surrounding smaller painted vignettes illustrating the narrative. Very rare too in this series are one-sided, full-page illustrations. Among the small number of such known works, are the Alvin O. Bellak Collection folio now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, accession no.2004-149-18, and a folio in the Museum Rietberg, Zurich from the Horst Metzger Collection (see Joachim Bautze, Lotosmond und Lowenritt: Indische Miniaturmalerei, Stuttgart, 1991, p.44, no.5, p.46).

The dating of this important manuscript has long been debated by scholars. In his essay on the Bellak painting (see Darielle Mason, Intimate Worlds: Indian Paintings from the Alvin O. Bellak Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001, pp.68-69, no.19), Professor John Seyller presents a case for an approximate dating of circa 1630-50, while another folio from the same manuscript in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ‘Krishna Steals the Gopis Clothing,’ accession no.1984.476, is dated as circa 1620-30. Archaised details of figures and facial types, costume, colour palette and composition (including abstracted red compartments) are features connecting this series to the earliest phases of Rajput painting, which show marked popular Mughal elements.

Although a colophon inscription has not yet come to light which could confirm the place of origin and completion date, this series has long been considered to be from Mewar, most likely from a centre outside Udaipur prior to the development of the Royal Mewar painting workshop at Udaipur during the reign of Maharana Jagat Singh (r.1628-52).

For other illustrated leaves from the same series see Sotheby's New York, 9 December 1980, lot 79; 14 December 1979, lot 91; 25 March 1987, lot 123; 6 October 1990, lots 192 & 193; Sotheby's London, 3 July 1980, lot 9 and 24 April 1980, lot 181.