Unknown maker
Hanuman spies Sita in the Ashoka Grove, from the “Shangri” Ramayanac. 1700–25
After her abduction, Sita is imprisoned in a garden on the island of Lanka. Female guards appointed by her captor, the demon Ravana, surround her and jeer as she crouches on a step. More about this work
About this work
After her abduction, Sita is imprisoned in a garden on the island of Lanka. Female guards appointed by her captor, the demon Ravana, surround her and jeer as she crouches on a step. The monkey in the tree above her is the hero Hanuman, a loyal friend to her husband Rama. He shrank to disguise himself and gives her a message: now that he has found her, he will bring Rama and their armies to rescue her.
Text from the Cleveland Museum of Art.
How it was made
- Opaque watercolour
- Watercolour made opaque with white or chalk and laid in flat, even layers. Persian and Indian painters ground their colours from minerals, applied them with the finest brushes and burnished the finished page.
- Tempera
- Pigment bound with egg yolk. It dries in minutes and can’t be blended wet, so painters built up form with fine, hatched strokes. It was Europe’s main panel technique before oil.
- Ink on paper
- Ink made from soot and animal glue, ground with water on an inkstone. A single brush can give a hair-fine line or a broad wash, and nothing can be corrected.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Cleveland Museum of Art has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 2025.8
- Credit
- Courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art
- Type
- Painting
- Department
- Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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