Kamod Ragini, folio from a Ragamala

The essence of Kamod ragini is viraha, the pain of longing. Kamod is a woman who adorns herself, creates a flower-garland bed in a secluded grove, and waits all night for her lover. A halo on this lotus-eyed heroine suggests that this heroine is Radha, the absent lover is Krishna. But a vivid orange sky, which signals dawn, indicates that Radha has waited all night in vain.
 
The folio’s artist employed a composition created in 1591 for the Chunar ragamala, but he played with color and created texture through dash-like strokes, cross-hatching, and translucent layers to heighten the mood. Lush with flowering creepers, textured foliage, and rippling grass, the idyllic bower is abuzz with herons, egrets and peacocks. Radha, painted in saturated hues of opaque paint that has been highly burnished and lavishly adorned with gold, glows in the landscape. She has the egg-shaped head and slim, almost rubbery body that characterizes the beautiful woman in Bundi painting of the eighteenth-century.