Maharana Jagat Singh Hawks for Cranes

Shiva and Dayal

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This spectacular panoramic vista of the Mewar landscape depicts a royal hunting party in a series of consecutive vignettes, creating a continuous narrative. The aerial perspective, reflecting the plunging views of terrain offered from many Rajput forts, was an innovation of the Mewar school, perhaps combined here with a new awareness of European cartography. The rays of golden sun—the insignia that Rajput princes displayed on their standards—add a surreal if somewhat celestial dimension to the composition. This painting is remarkable for its complex topography, differentiated with imaginatively devised pictorial devices—hillocks, streams, fields—each deployed to create a landscape of the imagination. The large scale of the work is typical of mid-eighteenth-century Mewar painting, as is the likelihood that multiple artists worked on it in a palace studio environment.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.

Metropolitan Museum of Art