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The Goddess Kali
| Content Provider | The Heritage Lab |
|---|---|
| Artist | Anonymous |
| Organization | Cleveland Museum of Art |
| Spatial Coverage | Kolkata West Bengal |
| Temporal Coverage | 1800s |
| Description | Black-skinned, four-armed, her tongue out, and blood dripping from her mouth, Kali has a third eye—representative of enlightened or divine knowledge—on her forehead. Simultaneously benevolent and dangerous, she holds a sword and a demon’s severed head in two hands while the other two hands are in gestures of protection and blessing. This image would have been sold as a pilgrim souvenir to both locals and the colonial British around the Kalighat temple and is a replica of the image worshipped inside the temple (see below). The frightening image of Kali especially fit into the colonial imagination and into Victorian popular culture and would have been an iconic souvenir/artifact to be shown to intrigued and horrified friends at home in England. |
| File Format | JPG / JPEG |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Rights License | CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication |
| Use Rights URL | http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed |
| Subject Keyword | Goddess Kali Kalighat Kolkata West Bengal Kalighat Painting Painting Cleveland Museum of Art |
| Content Type | Image |
| Resource Type | Painting |
