2-748-626 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Attendant Bearing a Fly Whisk (Chauri), c. 100-150. This graceful figure of a chauri -bearer (a whisk-bearing attendant) represents a late first- or early second-century variant of the Mathura style and derives from prototypes such as the yaksa from Parkham in the Mathura Museum. Kusana sculpture, while retaining the heavy sculptural volume and monumentality of the Maurya-Sunga style, has lost its rigidity here. The weight of the figure rests on the right leg, giving it a slight contrapposto stance and creating an easy, relaxed appearance. The geometrized forms predominant in pre-Kusana sculpture are eschewed now for the sake of greater realism. Sculpted in the round, the image has a carefully defined back. The modeling of the figure displays a great deal of sensitivity in the fleshy, rather plump treatment of the body, which successfully contrasts with the crispness of the ornaments and the bulk of the garments. The attire is usual for this type of male attendant figure. It consists of a transparent dhoti supported by a belt, tied on the right hip, that is made of several strings bound together in a crisscross fashion and terminating in jewels amid tassels. The long scarf ( uttariya ) is tucked under the belt in the back; originally, it extended in a sweeping curve to the front, and it was looped over the left wrist, while the other end of it went around the left forearm, now missing, and descended along the back. The jewels consist of a series of bracelets, a short, round necklace, and a long necklace of strands of beads bound by metal clasps and fastened at the back.