Pulicat workshop, fragment of a wall hanging depicting forest-dwelling people, c. 1610-1620 Brooklyn Museum (14.719.6) Photo Brooklyn Museum

Viewing the World from South India on a Seventeeth-Century Wall Hanging

The Brooklyn Museum in New York preserves a remarkable set of seven cotton textiles constituting a single monumental work of art, painted in vibrant colours with images of courtly audiences in an elaborate architectural setting. When purchased in 1914 by the museum’s curator of ethnology, the “painted curtain” was lying in a fragile condition with an Indian art dealer in Delhi, from where it was cut into seven parts and mounted onto individual panels for transportation to New York.

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