Cleveland Museum of Art

Four-armed goddess, with hearts in margin

Date

1900s

Medium

ink and color on paper

Culture

Eastern India, Bihar, Mithila region

Department

Indian and Southeast Asian Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

This goddess holds a lotus flower and a discus, along with two other unidentified objects. Historically, Madhubani paintings were murals created with brushes made of bamboo and cotton. They ornamented domestic spaces on the occasion of a festival or rite of passage in a woman's life, such as a birth or a wedding. In the wake of a drought in 1966, the All India Handicrafts Board encouraged women of the Mithila region make paintings on paper, so they could sell them and help support their communities. Village women of rural northeastern India create the distinctive paintings known as "Madhubani."

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