Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

Ashmolean − Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

Room 12 | India 2500 BC-AD 600 gallery

Explore the early development of Indian art, from the artefacts of the Indus Valley to the Hindu and Buddhist sculpture of north India and Gandhara.

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Galleries : 1 object

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Head of a moustachioed man

Location

    • currently in research collection

Objects are sometimes moved to a different location. Our object location data is usually updated on a monthly basis. Contact the Jameel Study Centre if you are planning to visit the museum to see a particular object on display, or would like to arrange an appointment to see an object in our reserve collections.

 

Publications online

  • Indian Art in the Ashmolean Museum by J. C. Harle and Andrew Topsfield

    Indian Art in the Ashmolean Museum

    These detached heads [EAOS.50 & EAOS.50.a] almost certainly belonged to figures adorning a stūpa, in the same way as the bases of stūpas in Gandhara, where terracotta was only rarely used, were often peopled with statues in stucco [EA1970.154 and EA1958.2]. In style, with their sensitive and impressionist modelling, they are indeed very close to the late Gandhara stuccos from Haḍḍa. The relatively small numbers of early Kashmir terracottas, practically all from Akhnur, also show, along with a rather rococo sweetness, the same sharpness of characterisation which led André Malraux to see a Gothic quality in the Haḍḍa sculptures. The Ashmolean examples are particularly good examples of this feature: the rendering of apparent neurosis in the face of the man wearing a helmet, perhaps one of the soldiers in the army of Māra who sought to prevent the Buddha from achieving illumination at Bodhgaya, and of self-indulgent languor in the moustachioed head.
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Objects may have since been removed or replaced from a gallery. Click into an individual object record to confirm whether or not an object is currently on display. Our object location data is usually updated on a monthly basis, so contact the Jameel Study Centre if you are planning to visit the museum to see a particular Eastern Art object.

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