View from the Top of the Rock, looking over the native Town, Trichinopoly, India

Nicholas & Co.

Date: 1878
Medium: albumen print
Dimensions: Paper: 22.6 x 28.5 cm (8 7/8 x 11 1/4 in.)
Country / context: India
Movement / tradition: South Asian arts
Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art
Pathway: South Asian arts ↗

FROM THE MUSEUM

The Ranganathaswamy Temple, dedicated to the god Vishnu, originated in the 1st century CE and is still active today. This view sets the gopura (temple entrance towers) in their urban context and juxtaposes the vast scale of the complex against the much humbler buildings where the Indian population lived and worked. To see carvings inside the temple complex, look at 2015.37 in the collection.

Collection text · The Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0

A MOMENT TO LOOK

Start with what you can see: shapes, surface, colour and scale. How might the listed materials affect the way this object was made and experienced?

Looking prompt · an invitation to observe, not a historical interpretation.

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