Kerala Mural Paintings
Lord Ganesha
The reclining elephant-faced Lord in full ornament against a stippled orange ground
Story
This is the most heavily worked Lord Ganesha in the collection, the trunk curling to the right, holding a pot with sweets.
The complexion is a pale rose-ivory, modelled entirely in stipple: thousands of tiny dots of warm pink built up along the trunk. Against it the ornament is worked in dense gold — circular jewel discs at the shoulder and knee, tiered collars, ear discs the size of the eye, anklets, and a crown that spreads across the upper left of the panel.
The ground is a flat vermilion-orange laid in even stipple and scattered with small white star-flowers, a device that keeps the empty field alive without drawing attention away from the figure.
Symbolism
- The curled trunk
- Turned left towards the offering — the god who accepts what is given
- The broken tusk
- Sacrifice of the part for the sake of the whole
- Lotus-bud border
- The temple wall base band — the panel's own threshold
- White star-flowers
- Scattered blossoms of celebration across the ground
Artistic Technique
- Whole figure drawn freehand in ochre, then outlined in fine brown
- Complexion built entirely in rose stipple, never blended
- Gold ornament laid disc by disc and ruled in white at the end
- Border band of lotus buds painted one bud at a time in three colours
- Ground stippled flat orange so the ornament stays the brightest thing in the panel
