Paintings Pichvai

Nathdwara, a festival morning. The curtain is drawn back, and Krishna, a young blue boy, stands against a cloth painted for the season.

Pichvai are the painted cotton temple hangings of Rajasthan, made above all in Nathdwara, home of the Pushti Marg shrine of Shrinathji. Hung behind the deity, a pichvai set the festival: Krishna lifting Govardhan Hill, the Rasa Lila dance with the gopis under celestial vimanas, sacred cows and Nandi, lotus ponds, peacocks. Painting one was itself sewa, an act of devotion. Artists worked in mineral pigment on large cotton cloth and finished them with gold leaf; Deccani variants used gold or silver foil on dark grounds.

These date from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth century, with Nepalese Buddhist hangings alongside. Framed over a bed or a long console, a pichvai fills a wall the way a tapestry once did.

The god changes his clothes. So does the wall.