Built atop a ridge on the east bank of Lake Pichola, the vast City Palace looks out over the streets of Udaipur. Construction of the City Palace began in 1553 with the founding of the city. Successive kings added new palaces and courtyards. Today much of the iconic cultural landmark is a public museum.Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, court painters developed distinctive ways to convey the experience of being within and around the City Palace. Two paintings of the palace’s most cherished courtyard, the Baadi Mahal, reveal how artists experimented with multiple perspectives and multiple temporalities to accentuate moods of delight and devotion. Shambhu’s 1765 composition playfully transforms the symmetrical stone inlay of the courtyard into a syncopated pattern and sharply exaggerates the shadows cast by torches. Some seventy years later, Ghasi dynamically reconceived the Baadi Mahal’s monumental presence by rendering its side arcades at 45 degrees.
Maharana Ari Singh II at worship in the City Palace
Shambhu, 1765
Opaque watercolor and gold on paper
Sheet, 67 × 53 cm
Purchase—Charles Lang Freer Endowment
Freer Gallery of Art, F1986.7
Maharana Ari Singh II at worship in the City Palace
Shambhu, 1765
Opaque watercolor and gold on paper
Sheet, 67 × 53 cm
Purchase—Charles Lang Freer Endowment
Freer Gallery of Art, F1986.7
