Did Raja Ravi Varma paint the Yashoda and Krishna image first? The ₹167-crore puzzle

When I curated Bhakti: The Art of Krishna astatine the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre successful 2024, 1 of the astir softly compelling works connected presumption was Raja Ravi Varma’s Yashoda and Krishna. For galore successful Mumbai, it was the archetypal clip encountering the coating successful person. Today, arsenic the enactment emerges from a backstage postulation and enters the auction circuit, it carries with it not conscionable aesthetic value, but humanities and fiscal weight.

And yet, what interests maine astir astir this coating is not its price, nor adjacent its authorship — but a question that remains unresolved.

Art past is seldom complete. It is constructed done objects, documents, and organization consensus, but besides done gaps — moments wherever the communicative does not afloat close. Yashoda and Krishna is 1 specified moment.

By nary means americium I attempting to question whether this coating is simply a Ravi Varma oregon not. It is present accepted arsenic 1 — and successful the satellite of art, acceptance often becomes its ain signifier of truth. But past has shown america that acceptance and certainty are not ever the same. The lawsuit of Salvator Mundi, sold arsenic a Leonardo da Vinci and aboriginal subjected to aggravated scholarly doubt, reminds america that belief, marketplace validation, and authorship bash not ever align neatly.

The question present is not whether this is simply a Ravi Varma. The question is: wherever does this representation travel from?

My ain uncertainty began not with the painting, but with stained glass.

In the Darbar Hall of the Lakshmi Vilas Palace successful Vadodara, 1 encounters a singular bid of stained-glass windows, commissioned successful the precocious 19th Century and executed by European workshops. Among them is simply a sheet depicting a parent and kid — unmistakably Yashoda and Krishna — rendered with a softness, intimacy, and affectional clarity that feels strikingly adjacent to Ravi Varma’s visual language but not adjacent enough.

And erstwhile 1 looks astatine the surrounding panels, the coherence breaks down.

The Vishnu images successful the aforesaid hall, accompanied by figures specified arsenic Garuda and Hanuman, look to person been executed by artists who did not afloat grasp the interior logic of Hindu iconography. The figures consciousness translated alternatively than understood — constructed from reference, but lacking fluency. These are not images calved from wrong the tradition, but interpretations of it. And so, the Yashoda-Krishna sheet is not different. Its affectional register, its humanisation of the divine, its compositional intimacy — each of this aligns intimately with what Ravi Varma was doing successful the precocious 19th Century, but who did it first?

This is wherever the puzzle begins.

If 1 examines Ravi Varma’s Baroda-period works from the 1880s and 1890s — particularly those associated with palace commissions — they thin toward large-scale, formal, communicative compositions. Yashoda and Krishna, by contrast, is smaller, quieter, and much devotional successful tone. Its scale, subject, and decorativeness beryllium somewhat extracurricular the expected model of those commissions.

At the aforesaid time, the coating bears the unmistakable signatures of Ravi Varma’s practice. He was self-taught, and his enactment often reveals anatomical inconsistencies. Figures are often resolved done drapery, jewellery, and staging alternatively than strict structural accuracy. In Yashoda and Krishna, 1 notices these tendencies clearly: the child’s assemblage is lone partially articulated, Yashoda’s seated posture is not wholly convincing, and the cow, portion narratively present, is not structurally integrated. To me, it feels similar Ravi Varma tried to transcript the stained solid but inactive determination is simply a large spread successful what we cognize helium painted successful Baroda, arsenic they stay connected show there, and this Yashoda - Krishna. Curiously, the stained solid appears, successful immoderate respects, to resoluteness these elements much clearly. The cattle is much legible. The spatial statement is much direct. And yet, the faces — the tenderness, the affectional halfway — look profoundly aligned with the Ravi Varma idiom.

So which came first?

Did Ravi Varma, alert of the palace commission, make a compositional drafting — a prototype — that was sent to the stained-glass store successful Europe? Or did the stained-glass representation beryllium independently, aboriginal inspiring a painted version? Or are some derived from a now-lost ocular root that circulated betwixt court, studio, and workshop?

My ain considered presumption is: Ravi Varma apt created a drafting oregon compositional cartoon of Yashoda and Krishna, which was shared with the stained-glass makers. What we spot successful Vadodara is not the archetypal image, but its translation into different mean — filtered done different hand.

The communicative does not extremity there

After Ravi Varma’s decease successful 1906, his member and the Ravi Varma Press played a cardinal relation successful reproducing and disseminating his imagery. Many works associated with Ravi Varma — including those that person appeared astatine auction successful caller years — beryllium to a broader ecosystem of accumulation involving workplace assistants, household members, and printmakers. The bound betwixt the master’s manus and the workshop’s output is often blurred.

Which brings america backmost to the present.

There are scholars who person studied Ravi Varma’s diaries successful detail. There are catalogues, archives, and organization histories. And yet, this peculiar transportation — betwixt the Darbar Hall stained solid and the coating — remains unexamined.

It is simply a tiny gap, perhaps. But an important one.

Because today, this question is nary longer conscionable academic.

It is, rather literally, a question worthy ₹167 crores.

Ashvin E Rajagopalan is an creation historiographer and subordinate curator of the India Pavilion astatine the Venice Biennale 2026, and manager astatine Piramal Museum of Art and Ashvita’s.