Description
Wearing white billowing monastic robes, the two nuns contrast with the beautifully adorned laywomen, who wear elaborately patterned textiles and jewelry. Jains commissioned illuminated manuscripts as a way to accrue religious merit, and they would have images of themselves at prayer inserted into the image cycles like this as signs of their patronage.
Provenance
Sanghavina Padano Bhandar, Patan, India; (Sander L. Feldman, Washington, DC, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) (?–1971); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (1971–)
Two nuns teaching lay women, colophon page of folio 167 (recto) from a Kalpa-sutra and Story of Kalakacharya
1278
Accession Number
1971.126.a
Medium
Gum tempera and ink on palm leaf
Dimensions
Overall: 5.4 x 32.1 cm (2 1/8 x 12 5/8 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund