Asset number
497026001
Description
Seated Hariti with children. She wears a sleeved tunic with fabric so thin and stretched on her breasts that none of the drapery folds continue over them; the exposed sleeve is ruched in a pattern of short, dense, undulating grooves and with a narrow band of paired beads running down its length. What looks like the end of a scarf hangs on her right from the elbow and may pass round the back to fall from the left shoulder, but then seems indistinguishable from what appears to be a draped piece that spreads from the left shoulder over the lap and covers both knees down to the ankles. The broad collar has a floral motif, and a beaded necklace of many strands falls between the breasts; one earring survives with strings of dense pendent beads. The thick, rounded bracelets are set with flat stones in circular mounts separated by bands of globular beads; the similar anklets have a floral roundel against a cross-hatched leaf pattern. Above hair gently waved sideways and a pair of raised curls curving beside a parting sits a wreath of centrally grooved, sharply cut leaves with a six-petalled blown flower at the centre front. A loop of hair, secured by beaded strands at its base, projects above the wreath within which the surface is otherwise quite plain. The head is globular with cheeks and chin gently rounded, the nose is damaged, the upper lip seems pursed and the narrow forehead projects with eyebrows in low relief over the protruding rounded eyes which have long narrowing corners. In her lap a naked child, wearing a beaded armlet, a girdle of discs and anklets and showing genitals, reaches up with an arm with bracelet to grasp Hariti's necklace. The backs of the hands holding the child are flat with curving, rather mechanically rounded fingers, the right index undercut and both little fingers wearing a ring. Between her feet a thick-set and damaged child sits with one knee down, the other vertical, wearing a collar, anklets and a narrow uttariya. To each side there is a group of three children, one above the other two but not apparently supported. On Hariti's right the two lower children wear tunics that leave the shoulder bare but cover a little of the upper arm and are open at the thigh. One, kneeling and with thick curls, is serving himself out of a full bowl and looks up; the other, with earrings and anklet, a bowl in the crook of his left arm, has a chubby oval face and a chignon in front of a thick lock to the back of his head. Above them crouches a naked boy with collar and anklets, both knees drawn up, a peacock perched on his left knee. His chubby face is round, his hair suggests the kakapada and he wears earrings. Opposite, two wrestling boys in loincloths look up, one over his shoulder. Their outer legs are undercut and one has curled hair as opposite. Above them another chubby child with loincloth, a short uttariya and the usual ornaments appears to hold two fingers to his mouth and the other hand on his hip. The chair has two turned legs, that on the goddess's left more exposed, and each has a small rectangular mortise at the top. In front a footstool, partly damaged and perhaps once repaired, since a recessed surface is keyed, has a sunken panel enriched with a horizontal foliate branch and a flattened dentil-and-drop border. Under the two groups of three children are grooved lotus petals hanging down.
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