Salvadori, SharonSmyth, CarolynRamaswamy, Lea2024-10-072024-10-072021Ramaswamy, Lea. "Kishangarh: A Case-Study in The Hybridity and Intentionality of Rajput Court Painting". BA Thesis, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy. 2021.https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14490/429Thesis (B.A. in Art History, Minor in Creative Writing)--John Cabot University, Spring 2021.Rajput court painting is a relatively new field of art historical research, conceived at thebeginning of the 20th century by nationalist scholars in India in a bid to include indigenouspainting within the Indian canon. To combat disparagement of Rajput painting as crude, earlyscholars instrumentalized the spiritual aspects of Rajput painting to rationalize its lack ofillusionism. Rajput court painting was portrayed as a tradition guided by Hindu instinct, wherethe paintings, often illustrating devotional subject matter, were viewed as spontaneous reflectionsof pagan imagination. Arguably, positioning Rajput painting in this manner is Orientalizing,emptying it of agency and decontextualizing these works from the complex socio-politicallandscape of North India under the Mughal Empire. This thesis takes the case study ofKishangarh, a provincial Rajput court, under the patronage of the crown prince, Savant Singh(1699-1764). Savant Singh was known for his contributions to Braj devotional poetry under thepen name Nagaridas, and for commissioning several miniature paintings that feature LordKrishna and his lover, Radha. By transforming the cowherd-god Krishna into a prince wholounges in palace gardens and rendezvouses with his elegant lover Radha under the intoxicatingcover of the jungle, the poetic intimacy of the Kishangarh paintings have enraptured scholars ofIndian painting since their “discovery” in 1959. However, these Kishangarh miniatures havestruggled to part with their “mystical” reputation as products of Hindu intuition. This thesis, inconversation with recent scholarship, attempts to subvert the notion that Rajput court paintingwas unchanging or incapable of responding intelligently to its environment. It will do so byseeking moments of human intervention and conscious decision-making to prove theintentionality of Kishangarh’s artistic production, in special consideration of Savant Singh’s roleas a patron with mobility and close involvement with his atelier.55 pagesenAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Indic paintingThesis