In Indian classical music a raga is a melodic framework tied to a mood and a time of day. A ragamala, or garland of ragas, is a series of paintings that gives each raga a human form and a scene. This small painting is one of a series, made around 1680 in Sirohi, in Rajasthan. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds it, and the Met's note explains that Vilaval is a morning raga, which is why a sun with a face rises in a dark sky at the upper right.
Vilaval is a ragini, a feminine form, and poetry describes it as a lady preparing to meet her lover. Here she reclines on cushions on a terrace while a companion holds up a mirror, and she fixes her earrings. A third woman stands at the right holding a fan of peacock feathers. The painter has built the whole scene from flat fields of red, green and white, with scalloped arches and a bright orange border.
There is almost no depth in the picture. The pavilion is drawn as a pattern, the ground is a block of color, and the people are arranged like decorations on a wall. The Met connects the style to a group of ragamala paintings attributed to the court of Sirohi, with echoes of the Malwa court style of the later seventeenth century.
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