- Title
- Radha Lamenting with Her Confidante (recto), Text (verso); Folio from the "Tehri Garhwal" Gita Govinda (Song of the Cowherd)
- Date Made
- circa 1775-1780
- Medium
- Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper
- Dimensions
- Sheet (Sheet): 6 3/4 x 6 in. (17.145 x 15.24 cm)
Image (Image): 5 7/8 x 5 5/8 in. (14.9225 x 14.2875 cm)
Frame: 20 1/2 × 15 1/2 × 1 1/4 in. (52.07 × 39.37 × 3.18 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.84.222.1
- Collecting Area
- South and Southeast Asian Art
- Curatorial Notes
The Gita Govinda (Song of the Cowherd) was composed by the Sanskrit poet Jayadeva (eastern India, circa 1170-1200). The celebrated poem marks the debut of Krishna’s paramour Radha. She is absent from the major early texts in which the life of Krishna is related: the Harivamsha (Lineage of Hari [Vishnu]), 1st century; Vishnu Purana (Ancient Stories of Vishnu), circa 450; and Bhagavata Purana (Ancient Stories of the Lord), 8th-10th century. It describes the initial passion of Radha and Krishna, their temporary estrangement over Radha's jealousy of Krishna sharing his love with other cow-herdswomen, and their ecstatic reconciliation in Krishna's nocturnal bower of delight.
This half-folio (left side) illustrates an episode from Chapter 7, “Cunning Krishna.” Radha is lamenting with her confidante over Krishna making love to Radha's imagined rival, which is depicted in the right half of the folio that is apparently now in the Robbins Collection, Potomac. (See Love in Asian Art and Culture (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, 1998), p. 74, fig. 3.) Many explicit Gita Govinda folios were split and sold separately.
The half-folio is from a widely dispersed series known as the "Tehri Garhwal" (or Second) Gita Govinda because more than 135 original works were first discovered in the royal collection of Tehri Garhwal, Uttarakhand by N. C. Mehta in 1926. Major repositories of additional folios include the Museum Rietberg, Zurich (17 folios) and the Kronos Collections, New York (9 folios).
