Radha seated holding a picture of Krishna, an illustration to the Rasikapriya of Keshav Das, Bundi, circa 1670-90

gouache with gold on paper, four lines of nagari text on yellow panel above, wide red borders, upper and lower borders trimmed

Colours bright, the areas with white paints flaked (could benefit from a professional restoration), the red border with some retouching including overpainting, set on mount, reverse showing some minor remnants of adhesive to top, as viewed.
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This vibrant yet delicate illustration is from a series of illustrations to the Rasikapriya of Keshav Das produced in Bundi in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Others from the series are in the National Museum, New Delhi, the Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi, the Rietberg Museum, Zurich, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Others have appeared at auction in these rooms 24 April 1979, lot 95, 11 October 1991, lot 806, and 19 October 1994, lots 168 and 170, and in our New York rooms 28 October 1991, lots 25-26, 17 June 1993, lot 180, and 30 November 1994, lot 13. For published examples see Paris 1978, no.161, Bautze 1991, nos.53-54.

The Rasikapriya is a treatise on the varieties of emotion and behaviour experienced by lovers in their relationships, idealised and personified as Radha and Krishna. Written by Keshavdas in 1591, it was a popular literary source for illustration by artists of many schools of Indian painting.