Pichwai: The Painted Cloth Behind the God

Most paintings hang on a wall to be looked at. A pichwai hangs behind a god, to frame him. The word literally means 'that which hangs at the back' — and for over 350 years, that has been exactly the job.

They come from Nathdwara in Rajasthan, home of Shrinathji — a child form of Krishna, worshipped as a striking black stone icon with one arm raised, lifting Mount Govardhan. The icon arrived in 1672, fleeing Aurangzeb's Mathura, and never left.

Behind it hangs the pichwai, and it changes constantly — a different cloth for each festival and season. Annakut piles up a mountain of food; the Festival of Cows fills the field with cattle; Sharad Purnima floods it with moonlight and lotus ponds.

A pichwai isn't decoration. It's the calendar of a god's year, painted in mineral colour.

The craft is exacting: hand-prepared cotton, natural pigments (a yellow once made, improbably, from cow's urine; a red from lac), fine miniature brushwork, gold relief. Generations of painters worked a single Nathdwara lane known simply as the Lane of Painters.

Today pichwais sell to collectors worldwide, but their real home is still the temple wall — backdrops to a deity who, by long tradition, likes to be beautifully framed.