Gitagovinda: India's Great Love Story

Description

Written by Jayadeva in the twelfth century, the Gitagovinda tells of the love between the shepherd girl Rada and Hindu god Krishna. Text in English and German. The Gita Govinda, the love story of cowherd girl Radha and the god Krishna, is a great among the literary works of India. Penned by Jayadeva at the end of the twelfth century, the Gita Govinda tells of the highs and lows of this love. A metaphor for the human yearning for God, this highly poetic and vivid work is to this day still closely associated with the religious practice around Krishna and the devoted love for the divine. In the eighteenth century, in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, the artist family of Manaku and Nainsukh von Guler created two exceptional picture series, which recount the Gita Govinda in unparalleled elegance and an enchanting wealth of detail. Based on selected images from the series, reproduced to the original scale, India's greatest love story, the Gita Govinda, invites you to immerse yourselves in the story of Radha and Krishna and be carried away into the atmospheric world of Indian miniature painting and poetry.

Caroline Widmer has been a curator of miniature paintings from India and Pakistan at Museum Rietberg, Switzerland, since 2017. After obtaining her PhD in religious studies (majoring in Indology) at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, she became a post-doc scholarship holder and devoted herself to researching Indian painting.