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Relief
unknown - Enlarge image
Relief
- Object:
Relief
- Place of origin:
Uttar Pradesh, India (made)
- Date:
1st century-2nd century (made)
- Artist/Maker:
unknown (production)
- Materials and Techniques:
Terracotta
- Museum number:
IS.145-1999
- Gallery location:
In store
A small modelled terracotta panel depicting a couple engaged in energetic love-making. The woman reclines on a bed, holding her spread legs whilst the man stands as he enters her. Both figures are youthful and athletic and wear their hair tied in off-set buns, characteristic of Sunga-period fashion; both also wear large ear-plug ornaments, again a recognised accoutrement of the period. The scene is set in a interior space, with Sunga-period crenelations visible on the upper wall, reminiscent of details seen on the railing coping stones of the Buddhist stupa site of Bharhut.
Erotic clay reliefs are a important category of early Indian terracottas and may be assumed to have been intended to give expression to early notions of fertility cults. The woman's posture, with exposed genitalia, persisted as the cult image of the goddess cult in the early medieval period, where the icon was often represented as only the female genitalia and the body replaced by a flower-head. Early erotic terracottas of this type probably represent the genesis of the Lajja Gauri cult image.
