Detail View: The AMICA Library: Krishna Govardhana
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AMICA ID:
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CMA_.1973.106
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AMICA Library Year:
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1998
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Object Type:
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Sculpture
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Creator Nationality:
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Asian; Southeast Asian; Cambodian
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Creator Dates/Places:
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Cambodia
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Creator Name-CRT:
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Cambodia, early Phnom Da style, Pre-Angkorean Period
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Title:
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Krishna Govardhana
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Title Type:
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Primary
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View:
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Full View
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Creation Date:
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first half 6th Century
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Creation Start Date:
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500
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Creation End Date:
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550
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Materials and Techniques:
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gray limestone
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Dimensions:
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Overall: 244cm, without base: 200.8cm
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AMICA Contributor:
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The Cleveland Museum of Art
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Owner Location:
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Cleveland, Ohio, USA
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ID Number:
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1973.106
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Credit Line:
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John L. Severance Fund
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Rights:
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Context:
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This sculpture of Krishna lifting Mount Govardhana represents the god in his aspect as the savior of mankind: by lifting the mountain, he provided his followers with shelter from torrential rains and flooding. The Phnom Da style that this sculpture illustrates is the earliest phase of Cambodian art and a prototype for later Cambodian sculpture. The sophistication of this precursory style can be attributed to Cambodian artists' knowledge of Indian sculpture, since Southeast Asia was colonized by Indians at that time. Aside from the great art-historical significance of this image and its rarity (there are only a handful of images of the early Phnom Da style known, most of them in the Phnom Penh Museum in Cambodia), in purely aesthetic terms it is one of the sculptural masterpieces of the world. The plasticity of the body, the physical beauty, and the spiritual content reflect the great influence of classical Indian Gupta style sculpture, which inspired Phnom Da sculpture. When this image of Krishna Govardhana was acquired by the museum in 1973 from the well-known private collection of Adolphe Stoclet in Brussels, the lower portion of the stele with the legs was missing. Many fragmentary pieces of early Pre-Angkorean sculptures discovered in the hamlet of Phnom Da by the French Archaeological Mission of the cole Franaise d'Extrme-Orient in 1935 had been sent to Stoclet who intended to have them restored. The fragments were so badly broken and in such a poor state of preservation that the task, in the circumstances available to a private collector, proved too onerous. Shortly after Stoclet's attempt, the fragments were abandoned in his garden in Brussels where they lay buried for the next forty-odd years. Subsequently, in 1977 this author "excavated" them, making the restoration of sculpture to its present form possible. S.C.
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Related Image Identifier Link:
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CMA_.1973.106.tif
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