c. 1900

Lakshmi

This representation of Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity and fortune, may have been a processional object carried aloft by devotees during the Gangaur festival. For this ten-day celebration of the arrival of spring and marital bliss, women dress in brightly colored clothes, decorate their hands and feet with mehndi (henna paste), and wear their finest jewels. They decorate wooden figures like this one with the same attention to detail. The painted jewelry seen here is elaborate and precisely rendered, from the forehead ornament to the medallions covering the tops of her feet. The figure would also have been draped in sumptuous, gold-covered garments.