
South Asian Art
VMFA is home to one of America’s premier collections of Greater Indian and Himalayan art, featuring spectacular examples of sculpture, paintings, architecture, textiles, and decorative art.
Search This CollectionOn view in the South Asian Galleries
Love & Longing in Indian Painting
The varied aspects of romantic love is one of the most prominent themes in the arts of India. Authors produced treatises on the many types of lovers and their differing temperaments. Poets compiled cycles of verse likening love’s phases to the passage of the seasons. Writers compared the religious quest for unity with the divine to the pursuit of one’s beloved. Composers crafted musical arrangements to express love’s many moods. And artists created paintings to visualize these and myriad other musings on the subject of love.
This exhibition’s presentation explores the subject matter of love; its many facets and the wide range of emotions it can produce— from enchantment, passion, and joy to betrayal, self-pity, and anguish.
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