Nitin Singhania Test: Indian Paintings- 1 - UPSC MCQ

The walls of the rock shelter caves were made of quartzite and so they used minerals for Pigments.

One of the most common minerals was ochre or geru mixed with lime and water. They used different minerals to make colours like red, white, yellow and green, which widened their palette. The white, dark red and green were used to depict large animals in on, elephant, rhino, tigers etc. For the human figurines, red was used for hunters and the green mostly for dancers.

This period saw an increase in the number of paintings using green and yellow colour. Most of the paintings concentrate on depicting battle scenes. There are many paintings of men riding horses and elephants. 

Some of them even carry bow and arrow which might indicate preparedness for skirmishes. We know that these cave sites were inhabited in the late historical periods as we have paintings and samples of writing in the Ashokan and Gupta Brahmi scripts. The other set of paintings from this period are at Narsinghgarh in Madhya Pradesh.

The Mural paintings are unique because of their sheer size. 

They cannot be contained in paper and need to be executed on the walls of large structures, usually caves and temple walls. 

In the ancient period, these were utilised by three major religions: Buddhism, Jainis and Hinduism. Some of the best examples are murals in the Ajanta- Ellora Caves.

The painting should not be larger than 25 square inches. 

The subject of the painting should be painted in not more than 1/6th of the actual size.

This school was flourishing during 750-1150 AD. These paintings are generally found as manuscripts and were generally executed on palm leaf or vellum paper. 

The Buddhist monks mostly used them and as their religion practised non-violence against all living beings, there was a stipulation to only banana or coconut tree leaves.

This school traces its origin to Gujarat and Mewar region in Rajasthan. It was the predominant school of painting in western India during 11 th to 15th century.

The most common themes of these paintings were Jain and in the later period the Vaishnava School appropriated them too. They brought in the concept of Gita Govinda and secular love into these paintings that were otherwise dominated by the Jain iconography.

Miniature paintings earlier, miniature paintings are small paintings with minute details. They were often painted for either books or albums, on perishable material including paper, palm leaves and cloth. 

Developed almost as a reaction to the enormous wall paintings, the art of miniature painting developed between the 8th and 12th centuries. This kind of painting can be attributed to the eastern and western regions.