Tag Archives: subhashini

The Pride of Panamalai – recreated -part 2

Thanks for the overwhelming support for the first part of the post. Before we begin the second part, must thank Mr. K.Srinivas of The Chroma Academy, for enlightening us about the first person to have discovered this amazing fragment of Pallava art. He shared the relevant extracts from the book ‘Art I Adore’ by Shri Amal Ghose – ‘A book on art based on interviews with K. Ramamurty’

The account starts with an artist proudly showing off a receipt – a receipt for a fine fresco painting of the seventh century origin, copied by an unemployed artist, just four years after India achieved Independence. It read as below

” This is to certify that his Museum purchased from Shri K. Ramamurti, artist, a copy of the mural painting of the Pallava period from the temple at Panamalai. Mr. Ramamurti was the very first artist to copy this interesting mural. – Superintendent, Government Museum, Madras. ”

The account of how he found the amazing work is heart rendering. Mr Ramamurti chanced on a newspaper (The Hindu) article about a foreigner camping at Pondicherry Ashram throwing a hint that there were faint lines indicating a vanishing Fresco on the temple wall in a temple he visited in Panamalai hills.

He saw his chance to discover a piece of history and set himself on the task. He had to pawn his wife’s jewels to undertake the journey, but when he landed there – the priests and local had no knowledge of such a fresco. He did not deter and went ahead to search every inch of the temple, sleeping there itself. On the 15th day of his search, he found a faint line in one of the inner shrines. Was it indicative of a head? He painstakingly started removing the layers of plaster that had been put on the original painting to reveal the Umai of Panamalai.

He then remembered the wet process his Guru Deviprasad had taught him, for mastering the water color. Applying the same process slowly but accurately, he produced the marvelous Panamalai Parvati for proper preservation for Posterity’s immense happiness.

Many years later when he was asked if he remembered anything more about the discovery he says

” Nothing but the heavenly joy I tasted at those unforgettable moments of the discovery of the Panamalai fresco has remained fresh in my heart.’ He was Kora Ramamurti

I am not sure where the said reproduction exists in the Madras Museum. It would be great if we can find it. In order to truly appreciate the greatness of the artist – i take you closer to view how the artist has used the shades of green to provide the contour of the face and then the clear highlight to bring out the nose.

A big salute to the discoverer and a bigger salute to the master artist, we continue our own effort at recreating the masterpiece.

Smt Subhashini the artist, talks of the challenging task

Recreating Panamalai Umai was a wonderful experience. Starting with what was available and slowly discovering the lost pieces turned out to be an enjoyable process. Especially when you have Mr Vijay helping with required references and hi resolution images, everything falls in place perfectly.

When arrived at the first complete sketch of umai the amount of happiness we had can never be explained with words. But the best part of it was when I started painting. This time, I have used acrylic paint on canvas. Starting from the textured background and slowly revealing her layer by layer was like opening a very special gift wrapped in many layers.

Everystep was a discovery and it did have some guess work. And making this guess work look authentic was challenging.

On the whole, you see the development stage by stage here and I hope you will enjoy this as much as we did making it.

A feast for our eyes. The completed work.

The Pride of Panamalai – recreated -part 1

We were overjoyed with the overwhelming response we received for our attempt to recreate the Pallava Somaskandar Paintings in Kanchi Kailasanathar temple which we carried as three parts – part 1, part 2 and part 3. Thanks to the stupendous work of Smt Subhashini Balasubramanian for whom art flows in the blood, coming in the line of legendary artists Sri Maniam and Sri Maniam Selvan, we proceed to attempt another difficult project.

It was in 2009, when we led a team of Ponniyin Selvan enthusiasts up the small hillock near Sengi – Panamalai.

To catch sight of the brilliance of Sri Rajasimha Pallava’s stupendous creation – The Panamalai Talagirisvara temple.

There is something about the graceful symmetry of Rajasimha‘s Vimana’s that give them a lasting allure.


But this one contained something more exquisite inside it. We have already seen how the great connoisseur King, had embellished his entire creation from wall to wall with stunning works of art – yes, every inch would have been painted, in the Kanchi kailsanathar temple – Panamalai was also similarly jewelled – with art. But sadly, only a few remain. But you will see, how even a single brush stroke of the Pallava artist has an unique brilliance in it.

There are hardly any remnants of the art work in the main Sanctum or Vimana, however, as you move around, just on the right side of the Vimana – there is, at a height of about 4 feet, a Sanctum, having a Shiva Linga. There are no steps and you have to brave the climb, for it holds the treasure.

Do not be fooled by the first casual glance, for the inside walls of this shrine hold possibly the most beautiful of maidens in all of land south of the Vindyas.

There is more to be seen, but we start with her today.

The Pride of Panamalai – Umai. She reveals herself to you, as you go near and words fail to even form, as the sensory overload stuns you.

Despite the ravages of time and human neglect, the perfection of the lines, the mastery over color, form, shade and the effects which their confluence create, the emotion that they bring out in so lithe a form.

Much of the plaster had fallen off and what remained of the background was tough to decipher, except for the colorful Umbrella. For eg, the outline seemed to resemble a typical Pallava cave pillar ( to her left)

You would have noticed that Umai is on the right wall, the main back wall too has very faint lines.

On closer study, we realised that it was Shiva dancing his triumphant Alidhanrita dance after destroying the three cities ( Tripurantaka). We will try and see more in a subsequent post, but why we need to know that , is because a similar composition of Rajasimha exists in Kanchi Kailasanthar, not in paint but in Stone.

Here too, we see Umai or Tirupurantaki in a similar ( slightly different) posture

Armed with this knowledge, would it be possible for us to recreate this lost painting and try to show her in all her glory. Well, we let you judge. Over to Subhashini

The colors and texture being worked upon.

Its important to mention here that as with the previous attempt where we got help from Jagadeesh, this time, we got help from another unexpected quarters. For quite sometime, there were very few images of Panamalai on the net and the best were those of Mr Franck RONDOT. I wrote to him explaining our intentions with samples of the previous attempt and he readily sent us his original pictures. They are of immense value to us both for this and also our future attempt for the Alidhanrita, since his were taken many years back and could have more of the original lines and colors !

Our thanks also to PSVP team of Saurabh, Shaswath, Shriram and many others for making the trip and sharing their pictures.

and we start with here

To be continued..

Recreating a lost treasure – Somaskanda Paintings of Kanchi Kailasanatha – Part 3

Its been an amazing journey taking our readers through the last couple of posts, as we are treated to ring side seats to this delightful recreation of a lost pallava painting, from the Kanchi Kailasantha temple of Sri Rajasimha Pallava ( 700 CE !!), moving with the artist stage by stage.

We had started of by blocking in most of what we could salvage from the surviving pieces and started working on filling the finer details. The main hero of this panel comes up now. Shiva.

Next Umai, takes form.

Working on the divine mother a bit more. We notice that she is wearing a thin yellowish blouse or has applied turmeric on her upper torso.

The coloring starts now, with very light skin tones.

Shiva gets his color including his famous Neelakanta !

Umai matches her beloved now.

Lets see how they both pair up.

Its coming up quite well. lets add more color and fill in the details of Shiva’s Keyuras ( arm bands)

The bottom ganas and stands get colored up.

and as we approach the final stages of the composition, time for a quick stock taking. Have we missed any detail.

We forgot to correct the hands of Brahma, to be in the anjali pose.

This is where we go back to the origins of this study on Somaskanda evolution – the 1971 article of Dr Gift Siromoney.

http://www.cmi.ac.in/gift/Archeaology/arch_somaskanda.htm

“Of Siva’s four arms, his lower right arm is extended horizontally to the side with his hand in the position of holding something, such as a flower, though no object is actually shown. With his upper right hand he holds a snake by its tail. His lower left hand is in the ardha-dhyana mudra. His upper left hand is near his shoulder as though holding a rosary or akshamala. Siva’s left leg is down.”

This is ofcourse his reference to the early pre Rajasimha Style somaskanda sculptures. But there is no reference to the snake in the Rajasimha style Somaskanda. But his pointer made us search for the snake in more detail.

Do we see something in the lower right hand?

Do you see the raised hood of a beautiful Cobra. We incorporate it into ours.

and without further delay, with many thanks to the artist Mrs. Subhashini Balasubramanian and our young photographer jagadeesh, we have our recreation of the 8th Century lost wonder.

We hope you all enjoyed this attempt ( any mistakes are purely unintentional and we are open to comments)

Recreating a lost treasure – Somaskanda Paintings of Kanchi Kailasanatha – Part 2

Its so nice to receive such wonderful feedback from all readers, believe me it was as interesting and thoroughly enjoyable to me and the artist Mrs. Subhashini Balasubrmanian, as it has been to you, to finally be able to fulfill a long pending and cherish dream, of seeing this beautiful panel in one piece. But then, we wanted to share with you the journey of our recreation process, so that you also learn want we learn’t working on this assignment.

Thankfully, a lot of finer detail was made available to us by Jagadeesh’s high resolution photos of the four remaining panels of the Kanchi Kailasantha Somaskanda Pantings. We once again thank him for his timely support.

Having done the general composition of the panel, we returned to study the panels at more depth to figure out the gana and the attendant. The Gana was tough, as only a part of his face was available in one of the panels, so we had to do the rest from a bit of artistic license.

The lady attendant and the details of the beautiful saree pattern of Umai came to us from the panel.


The next was the question of the pitcher or vase, though not there in any of panels – for all the panels have peeled off – we do not have any reference to this portion in the panels, people following the thread on Somaskanda Evolution would have found the small pitcher being a permanent feature in all of Rajasimha’s Somaskanda Panels. Take for example this somaskanda from the Mallai shore temple, though the gana and attendant are not there for sure, we do get to see this prominent pitcher / vase.

So, the vase finds its place in our recreation as well.

The next ofcourse was Brahma. Only one of the panels, has a outline of Brahma.

Depending on this, showing the side faces of Brahma was a bit tricky. So we decided to take inspiration from the splendor of Pullamangai temple.

and fashioned our Brahma. ( the lower hands must be changed to anjali – praying posture – we should do it soon)

Thankfully, Vishnu was pretty straight forward with one of the panel surviving completely giving us a shot at the magnificence of the Pallava artist.

So the next question before us was Skanda.

We needed to get upclose to see if we could spot the features of baby Skanda, it was very important, for isn’t he the most beautiful of Gods and imagine his as a small baby.

While, we were looking at the closeups, we realised that the Throne did not have lion motifs as had envisioned them, but were just decorative patterns.

Now, to get Umai’s face, headdress and posture correct.


Shiva, was especially tough, the toughest being the Hand mudras, ( we were helped by a small note – but we will see that in the concluding part of this series). Take for eg, his upper right hand.

The Makuda of Shiva, was especially tough one, as we wanted to get as close as possible to the original.

There was this particular design on the head dress, that was very vaguely familiar, but searching for it in sculpture and paintings, finally stuck pay dirt in Dr R. Nagasamy sir’s Masterpieces of South Indian Bronzes. This Pallava bronze, had a very unique twin makara clasps.

So,we could add that authentic detail into our sketch as well.

and here we have arrived at a basic prototype, to further iterate and work on adding embellishments.

I am sure, all of your are eager to see the finished color version, but that will be in the third and concluding part of this series.

Recreating a lost treasure – Somaskanda Paintings of Kanchi Kailasanatha – Part 1

The lure of the recreating the lost treasures of Rajasimha’s famed paintings has been on my drawing board for long. Having experienced the sheer ecstasy of seeing the fragments of brilliance that are still remaining, my heart wept with a strange mixture of joy and sorrow. Joy at knowing that the pinnacle of artistic talent that my land had 1300 years ago, that he could still take my breath away – albeit only in traces, the grace of his lines, the versatility of his palette, the excellence of form , stumped me. Sorrow at the realisation, that having survived for so long, the day that these would not be there anymore to inspire and impress a future generation, was not far away.

Modern photography techniques and the net, could help me to a certain extent, to at least capture these for posterity, but then there was always a niggle, a silent wish to be able to see these beauties in their original finery. My imagination helped in painting them in my mind, but to be able to transfer this onto the physical plane, needed greater acumen. My early attempts are tracing them, using manual tracing paper and online trace software, proved that this was not a task for technologically empowered, but for someone who had it in the genes.

Call it luck and chance, or maybe an inner desire of these beauties to be recast and re adored – a causal visit to a Art exhibition, of friends from Facebook, led to an introduction to none other than the clan of Sri Maniam. yes, the master who illustrated Kalki’s immortal works,Immortal works , whose Son Sri Maniam Selvan has continued in his tradition, – his works ,but it was not he, but the granddaughters of the great man. The fertile minds of the master has indeed spawned a second generation of divine artists ! So, i did get to meet Mrs. Subhashini Balasubramanian . We talked about Kalki, his works and obviously about art. Being the greedy guy that I am, I immediately sought her help on the long standing wish, and she readily agreed. We decided to start with the Somaskanda Panels of Kanchi Kailasanthar temple.

The task was not easy, but we didn’t know that fate and destiny had in store for us. The paintings are in really bad state and we had to form a collage of about 4 different works, to compare and pick out missing details. Unfortunately, despite my claims of having a large database, i could not get decent quality / resolution of these paintings. A frenetic search with friends and well wishers didn’t yield the desired results either.

We had to work with what we had in hand, putting together the bits and pieces. Just as i was loosing heart,I got the first cut from Subhasini…

I was clean bowled by the clarity in the work and the inherent beauty in the form. Clearly, the genes have gotten to work and I knew that my objective was not a distant dream but a definite reality. We were working for a week on the details, but the problem of obtaining high resolution photos for closer study loomed large. Just then, a mail arrives from a school boy. He had chatted with me sometime in May through sculpture chat on the site, …he was from vellore and was waiting for his ICSE X std results. The mail reads

“You are invited to view prithviraj’s photo album: kanc
Hello anna! Do you remember me? Am Rajakesari. I would like to share some photographs i took in Kanchipuram with u. I would be happy if these photos will be useful to you.”

And inside we see the exact photos which we wanted, the exact angles and he sent me the high resolution images as well. What a coincidence !! I can see you asking me, why all this about high resolution images, well you will understand as we see the recreation process.

Here is our Hero, Jagadesh, studying 11th Std now in Vellore.

The art of the Pallavas, so superbly nurtured by Rajasimha Pallava, finds release through the lens of a 11std Boy today and feeds our aspirations to recreate them.

Brahma

Umai

Vishnu

The need for high resolution images, comes to the fore as we explore the numerous highlights and new motiffs and features come to the fore. This Gana and lady attendant are spotted.

We try and experiment with Lion motifs for the legs of the throne – like the ones we saw in the Mallai Mahishasuramardhini Mandabam

To come up with the next versions of the sketch.

Its shaping up quite well, but you have to wait for the next part of this post to see more !!