Composite Elephant
India, Agra, ca. 1600
Watercolours and gold on paper
AKM143
© The Aga Khan Museum
Painted in Mughal India ca. 1600, this painting, once mounted in an album, shows a majestic crowned peri (fairy) and its elephant mount formed from multiple, interlocking creatures, packed tightly together — birds, mythical and actual quadrupeds, and humans. Guiding them is a footman dressed in the garb of an Indian qalandar (itinerant mystic), who is overpainted in luminous translucent white, forming a stark contrast to the motley, crowded figures behind him.
倶生神立像
Gushōjin
Kamakura period (1185–1333)
13th century
Wood with traces of pigment and lacquer
The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975
1975.268.700a–c
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art