Tanjore Painting

Tanjore painting, locally palagai padam (picture on a wooden plank), takes its visual vocabulary from the temple traditions of Thanjavur, whose Brihadeeswarar Temple murals date to the Chola era. The current form emerged under the Nayakas in the 16th century and reached its zenith under Maratha rule (from 1676), especially during Maharaja Serfoji II (1777-1832), a warrior-scholar-patron who brought Deccan artisans skilled in gesso work, gold-foil application and stone inlay, making the gold and ornamentation expansive and dominant. After decline under colonial rule it was revived in the 20th and 21st centuries and holds a GI tag.

Tanjore painting is devotional image-making conceived as sacred object rather than decoration: large, round-faced deities in serene frontal poses, rendered in glowing colour and, above all, in real gold. The raised gesso relief and gem inlay give the figures a shimmering three-dimensional presence intended to inspire worship.

The process moves from sketch on the board, to a cloth-and-paste base, to chalk-paste relief work, to gold-foil application over the raised surfaces, and finally colour and gem inlay. Subjects were first Hindu deities and epic scenes, later extending to Christian, Jain and portrait subjects, and the Maratha court also introduced reverse-glass painting. Master artisans traditionally worked anonymously and rarely signed their work.

Tanjore painting's gold-and-gem aesthetic and its calendar-art descendants (notably through C. Kondiah Raju) profoundly shaped 20th-century South Indian popular religious imagery in print and film, and the style remains a fixture of Tamil devotional visual culture.

Tanjore painting is a thriving living craft, with artisan workshops in Thanjavur and Chennai upholding the traditional gesso-and-gold technique alongside more affordable imitation-gold versions for a broad market, its authenticity protected by the GI tag.

The tradition is centred on Thanjavur, with a major contemporary artisan base in Chennai, and a historically related Mysore school under Wodeyar patronage. From Tamil Nadu it now reaches a national and international devotional and collector market.

[Atlas Assessment] Tanjore is a strong craft node with clean GI provenance and dense graph links to Thanjavur, the Brihadeeswarar Temple, the Maratha court and the related Mysore school. The Atlas records C. Kondiah Raju only as legacy context per the living-status gate.