Discover the periods, traditions, artists and masterpieces that define the many histories of Indian art.
Mauryan art joined pillars, inscriptions, animal capitals, stupas, caves and highly finished stonework to the scale of the first large empire in South Asia.
Early Buddhist art in India centred on stupas, railings, gateways, narrative reliefs, inscriptions and symbolic forms connected to pilgrimage and monastic communities.
Chola bronzes are South Indian sacred images, often created by lost-wax casting for temple worship, ritual dressing and festival movement.
Gandhara and Mathura were major centres of Buddhist image-making in the early centuries CE, each developing distinctive materials, workshop traditions and visual languages.
Gupta art developed influential languages of sculpture, temple architecture, coinage and painting between the fourth and sixth centuries CE.
The Ajanta cave paintings form a major Buddhist visual archive of narrative, devotion, courtly life and monastic patronage, created in phases between roughly the second century…
The Ellora caves are a monumental rock-cut complex in Maharashtra containing Buddhist, Hindu and Jain excavations created across several centuries.
Indian miniature painting refers to small-scale manuscript and album painting produced across courts, workshops and devotional communities, especially from the medieval to early modern periods.
Mughal painting developed in imperial workshops that combined Persianate manuscript traditions, South Asian knowledge and selected European visual devices.
Rajput and Pahari painting encompasses diverse court traditions that visualised poetry, devotion, music, portraiture and royal life across Rajasthan and the Himalayan hills.
Indian folk and tribal art refers to diverse community-based visual traditions, but the labels are broad and should never erase named peoples, artists, functions and histories.
Madhubani or Mithila painting is a group of visual traditions from the Mithila region, historically associated with domestic and ceremonial wall painting and later expanded onto…
