Krishna and Radha Embrace during a Storm (recto); Priests Worship Shrinathji (verso); folio from a royal Kota-Jaipur album

Seated under an awning outside of a sumptuous bedchamber, the blue-skinned Krishna and his consort, Radha, hold one another close. The lightning that snakes across the dark sky above them signals the onset of a powerful monsoon rain, which the artist renders as sheets of water that swirl across the awning and heavy drops that leave faint, white traces as they ricochet off of the ground. Krishna and Radha gaze at one another as if unaware of the storm. Radha’s right hand grazes the fingertips of Krishna’s left hand and arcs over her head as she removes her delicate veil, while peacocks watch the couple from the shelter of the trees at right. The deep shading around the figures’ eyelids and jawlines and the full, gently rounded forms of their faces and torsos characterize paintings completed in the kingdom of Kota during the second and third decades of the eighteenth century. This folio was part of a larger album that contained paintings of Krishna and other popular subjects drawn from northern Indian literary and religious traditions. In the album, paintings from Kota were paired or interspersed with later paintings from the kingdom of Jaipur, such as the one on the verso of this folio. It depicts two priests worshipping a form of Krishna called Shrinathji. The wide green and red bands with gold vegetal scrolls that border the paintings on both sides of the folio indicate that the album was assembled after the latter paintings were completed, perhaps at Jaipur. The circumstances surrounding the Kota paintings’ transfer to Jaipur are not yet understood.