Jaipur to teach the Indian process of fresco-painting in the Calcutta School of Art.[1] A panel in fresco executed at this time by Mr. Abanindro Nath Tagore, CIE., illustrating the story of Kacha and Devajānī in the Mahabhāratā[2] is reproduced in Pl. LXXIX. These Jaipur craftsmen also renewed the polished plaster in the ballroom of Government House, Calcutta, by Lord Curzon's orders.
The preparation of the lime requires great care and patience, and its application to the surface of the walls is an art in itself, just as was the wax coating (ganōsis) applied to ancient Greek statuary. The degenerate practice followed in many old Hindu temples of frequently smearing all the building with whitewash is doubtless derived from the same tradition: but it is now done so unintelligently and unskilfully that the masterly technique of the original sculpture is obliterated by the plastering. In the temples which were desecrated by the Muhammadans and abandoned as places of worship the last painted intonaco put upon the stone would in most cases eventually disappear through natural causes, even when unscientific antiquarians have not assisted them in ignorance of the Indian sculptor-painter's technical methods. In favourable circumstances the astonishing permanence of Indian mural painting has been proved by the frescoes of Ajantā and Sīgirīya.
When these technical conditions are understood, it will be evident that the record of Indian religious painting in pre-Muhammadan times is not really so fragmentary as might appear at first sight, for in a complete history of the art the painted reliefs of
