MWW Artwork of the Day (1/13/18) Classical India (Western Chalukyan Empire, 973-1189) Celestial Musician (Gandharva)(11th c.) Slate statue, 103.5 cm. high The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Gift of Florence & Herbert Irving)
A semidivine celestial musician to the gods is shown playing a flute, standing beneath the canopy of a flowering tree. This bracket figure was intended to decorate a pillar capital of the interior of a Hindu temple of the western Chalukyas. Temples of the southern Deccan favored the use of such figures of celestial musicians and dancers, poised at an angle between the capital of a pillar and the temple's interior ceiling stones to form a bridge between the worldly and heavenly spheres, and to make explicit the notion of the temple as a heavenly palace.
(from the MMA catalog)
For more South Asian and Non-Western artworks, see these MWW Special Collections: * MWW Non-Western Painting Gallery * MWW Non-Western Sculpture & Architecture