Chitra /Ardhachitra /Chitrabhasha

Chitra /Ardhachitra /Chitrabhasha

Standardized aesthetic norms appeared in South Asian art from about the fifth century CE, coinciding with the Gupta hegemony of the subcontinent (c. 320–c. 520 CE). The consequent canonization of art spawned a rich descriptive and normative vocabulary for identifying the scope of Indian artistic representation. The terms chitra, ardhachitra, and chitrabhasha are used in this context to differentiate broadly between sculpture, relief, and painting, respectively.

Distinctions Among Chitra, Ardhachitra, and Chitrabhasha

Although in the earliest theoretical texts on South Asian art, the term chitra is used to mean "sculpture" or "painting," in certain texts of the medieval period,chitra means "sculpture in the round," and a distinction is made between chitra (sculpture), ardhachitra (relief), and chitrabhasha (painting). Perhaps the most important of these texts is the late sixteenth-century Shilparatna attributed to Srikumara of Kerala. The earliest-known text dealing with chitra in general is the Vishnudharmottara, generally dated as contemporaneous with the flowering of classical South Asian art (fourth–sixth centuries).Little of ancient South Asian stone sculpture is cut completely in the round. Among the earliest examples of South Asian sculpture in the historic period are the massive yakshas and yakshis (supernatural elementals) from Mauryan times (third century BCE), chiseled out of sandstone and given the high surface polish characteristic of this period.

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