Pair of Doors Painted with Female Acrobats and Dancers (Primary Title)
Unknown (Artist)
This pair of painted doors probably once enlivened a room in a royal mansion or noble estate in Sri Lanka, an island nation off India's southeast coast. Two graceful dancers at the bottom of each door support a succession of eleven elegantly intertwined female acrobats. Many of the voluptuous figures clutch flowering plants in their hands. Groups of dancers and acrobats, often playfully arranged, were popular subjects for the painted decoration of buildings around Sri Lanka's capital city ofKandy in the 18th century. In these doors, the distinction between scrolling floral forms and sinuous human bodies is blurred, creating a unified and mesmerizing rhythmic design.
Robert A. and Ruth W. Fisher Fund
Image released via Creative Commons CC-BY-NC
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