Woman and Confidante Lamenting her Absent Lover, Folio from an Amaru Shataka (Hundred Stanzas of Amaru)

* Nearly 20,000 images of artworks the museum believes to be in the public domain are available to download on this site. Other images may be protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights. By using any of these images you agree to LACMA's Terms of Use.

Woman and Confidante Lamenting her Absent Lover, Folio from an Amaru Shataka (Hundred Stanzas of Amaru)

India, Madhya Pradesh, Bundelkhand or Malwa, circa 1650-1660
Drawings; watercolors
Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper
8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.32 x 13.97 cm)
Gift of Jane Greenough Green in memory of Edward Pelton Green (AC1999.127.19)
Not currently on public view

Curator Notes

Amaru was an 7th- or 8th-century Sanskrit poet who composed a hundred (shataka) verses about love and its various moods....
Amaru was an 7th- or 8th-century Sanskrit poet who composed a hundred (shataka) verses about love and its various moods. The text verses corresponding to the folio’s imagery are inscribed in the header: “From today onwards, I shall not give any place in my heart to anger against my lover; nor shall I ever mention the name of that poison-like evil-minded one. So will not the night, laughing loudly through the clear race of the moon, pass without him, or will a single day in a rainy season, darkened by clouds, pass without him?” (Amaru Shataka 72) Here, the heroine is pining for her absent lover and discusses her melancholy mood with her confidante as they sit on a palace terrace. See also its series mate M.71.1.16. Additional folios from this dispersed series, which is distinguished by a meandering flowering vine along the bottom, are in the Asia Society Museum, New York (1979.58) and National Museum of Asian Art, Washington (F1934.16).
More...