Ladies Shooting from a Pavilion

The anonymous master who painted this work reveled in detailed depictions of animals in nature. A pair of magnificent lions have come to drink at a pond, and the male turns back, sensing that something has alerted the deer. Three palace women from the veranda of a lodge aim muskets in their direction. White monkeys with black faces seem agitated and flee the roof for the mango tree, and a small mammal called a civet, who has just caught a bird, slinks away into the rushes. On the far banks of the pond is a shrine to the Hindu god Shiva, denoted by a linga, an abstract phallic sculpture on a pedestal, in front of which is an image of his mount, the bull.