Bodhisattva Padmapani

Painted on the wall of a Buddhist cave-temple at Ajanta in western India, this bodhisattva, an enlightened being who lingers in the world to help others, lowers his eyes in serene compassion with a blue lotus, the padma, in his hand. The gentle sway of the body and the soft modeling of the face belong to the Gupta age, the classical peak of Indian art. Cut and painted into living rock in the fifth century, then lost to the jungle for over a thousand years, the Ajanta murals are the finest to survive from ancient India.