MARKET SCENE
Rajasthan, possibly Jaipur or Bikaner
c. 1780 Tempera on cotton
100 x 300 cm

In the summer of 1977, I was in New Delhi, where I went at least twice a year to visit India and shop for the store I had opened a year earlier. One of my destinations was the street market held every weekend beneath the walls of the Red Fort, once the residence of the Mughal emperors. It was a market where anything used was sold, from the humblest utensils to fifth-hand clothes, and where I sometimes found antique saris, brocades of extraordinary quality and colors that intoxicated the eyes.
One Sunday, as I was browsing through the row of vendors displaying their wares on the ground, I saw out of the corner of my eye a piece of colored fabric mixed in with a pile of rags that I was scrutinizing in the hope of finding something interesting. I bent down and saw that it was a piece of hand-painted cotton, and I began to untangle it from the tangle of fabrics. It was endless, and the more I brought it into the light, the more its colors and simple figures suggested ancient and fabulous worlds to me. My heart was beating with excitement, but I didn’t want to show my interest because the purchase was the result of a negotiation that was often a psychological challenge between the customer, who wanted to pay as little as possible, and the seller who, if he saw the spark of desire in your eyes, would multiply the asking price. So I bought it quickly, to prevent someone else from offering more.

I returned to the hotel, where I laid it out on the floor and was finally able to examine it closely. It was about three meters long and one meter high. It reminded me of the joyful imagination of classic Rajasthan painting, but also of the charm of certain Italian frescoes from the 14th century. The colors shone with purity and the figures were defined only by their outlines, but even though they were faded, you could still make out what they were doing. I tried to figure out who the figures in all those kiosks represented, and immediately thought of the bazaars I had seen in the towns of Rajasthan.
The painting consists of three groups of shops separated by two gray-background streets crowded with men, women, and horsemen in traditional costume, intent on observing the goods on display, discussing with the various merchants, and making purchases. The women are not wearing the classic sari but the typical Rajasthani costume consisting of a wide skirt, a bodice, and a shawl covering the head and shoulders. It is a vivid, lifelike fresco that takes us back to ancient times. The shops have arched entrances and are all different colors. We see crafts that have disappeared, such as the bow maker, and others, such as the scribe or the oil lamp seller, which were still common at the time.

Delighted with my lucky discovery, I hid my treasure in the backpack I used to travel with at the time and, once back in Milan, I had it cleaned, the pigments fixed, and mounted like a painting on a frame protected by a sheet of plexiglas. I displayed it in my first shop in the heart of old Milan, where those shapes and colors recreated the India I loved. I waited for a customer with whom to share that joyful representation of a legendary India, but after a couple of years I decided to keep it and hang it on the walls of my home, where it has lived with me ever since. Every time I watch it, I feel the same emotions as I did way back , and I feel lucky to have been able to experience the joy those those scenes brought to me. For almost 50 years, I have tried to find information about the era, the school, and the tradition of this “fresco of urban life.” I have written to scholars, visited museums, and read everything I could find on Indian painting, but to no avail. Then suddenly last year, Shreya Padmanabhan, a young Indian scholar, came to visit me, and I told her this “never-ending story.”

Miraculously, she replied that she knew a scholar who might be able to help me. I immediately contacted Dr. Sarang Sharma, who kindly agreed to write the comprehensive summary that you can read below: I am grateful to both of them. So the mystery has been revealed. If it had taken just one glance for the heart to fall in love with this painting, finally reason and the thirst for knowledge have been also satisfied.

MARKET SCENE
by Sarang Sharma

This large-format painting on cloth—a medium often favoured in Rajasthan for narrative and topographical compositions, particularly in lieu of the more common handmade paper—offers a remarkably structured and animated portrayal of a bustling urban market. Likely produced in Jaipur or Bikaner around 1780, the work exemplifies a painterly interest in civic life and spatial order, rendered with both precision and vitality. The composition is meticulously organised into a grid of nine vertical columns, each subdivided into three horizontal registers, thus forming a matrix of 27 discrete scenes. This architectural segmentation facilitates a panoramic yet compartmentalised view of daily mercantile activity, functioning almost like a storyboard that captures the kinetic pulse of a Rajasthani bazaar. Three broad pathways run across the length of the painting, demarcating wide lanes along which a variety of vendors are stationed in small kiosk-like shops. While the visual attributes of the figures do not immediately distinguish shopkeepers from customers, the nature of each trade is subtly signalled through iconographic cues.

A jeweller displays ornaments on the interior walls of his stall; a textile merchant spins yarn, evoking the rhythms of local craft traditions; a perfumier sits serenely beside miniature flasks of scent; while an artisan engaged in bow-repair inspects his ware with focused care. These vignettes are animated by the expressive interactions between buyers and sellers, the dynamism of which breaks the underlying formal symmetry of the design. Among the painting’s many charming details is a small white lamb, depicted mid-theft, nibbling with visible delight at the fresh assortment of a confectioner (halwāī). Unaware of the intrusion, the vendor is seen deep in negotiation with a potential buyer. This moment of gentle humour imbues the composition with a touch of realism and pathos, drawing the viewer into the human drama that unfolds across the marketplace. The orthogonal street layout and repetitive shopfronts echo the spatial organisation of traditional city-centres in Rajasthan, many of which continue to function in a similar manner today. Each stall, rendered in near-identical architectural form, reinforces the sense of civic regularity, while also amplifying the painter’s interest in everyday urban life.

Dr. Sarang Sharma is an art historian and researcher specialising in Pahari miniature painting. Sarang’s work explores the intersections of aesthetics, iconography, and socio-political contexts in Indian art. Sarang has authored several essays on Pahari painting.