anuradapura paintings

 sigiri paintings




The paintings would have covered most of the western face of the rock, covering an area 140 metres long and 40 metres high. There are references in the graffiti to 500 ladies in these paintings. However, many more are lost forever, having been wiped out when the Palace once more became a Monastery so that they would not disturb meditation. Some more frescos different from the popular collection can be seen elsewhere on the rock surface, for example on the surface of the location called the "Cobra Hood Cave".
Although the frescoes are classified as in the Anuradhapura period, the painting style is considered unique, the line and style of application of the paintings differing from Anuradhapura paintings. The lines are painted in a form which enhances the sense of voluminousness of figures. The paint has been applied in sweeping strokes, using more pressure on one side, giving the effect of a deeper colour tone towards the edge. Other paintings of the Anuradhapura period contain similar approaches to painting, but do not have the sketchy lines of the Sigiriya style, having a distinct artists' boundary line.

The Apsara paintings

The most famous features of the Sigiriya complex are the fifth-century paintings found in a depression on the rock face more than 100 metres above ground level. Reached today by a modern spiral staircase, they are but fragmentary survivals of an immense backdrop of paintings that once extended in a wide band across the western face of the rock. The painted band seems to have extended to the north-eastern corner of the rock, covering thereby an area nearly 140 metres long and, at its widest, about 40 metres high. As John Still observed, 'The whole face of the hill appears to have been a gigantic picture Gallery the largest picture in the world perhaps' (Still 1907: I5).
All that survives of this great painted backdrop are the female figures preserved in two adjacent depressions in the rock-face known as 'Fresco Pocket A and 'Fresco Pocket B' (three other depressions: 'Fresco Pockets C, D and E higher up the rock-face, also contain patches of plaster and pigment and, in at least one instance, fragments of a painted figure). Traces of plaster and pigment elsewhere on the rock-face provide further evidence of the extent of the painted band. They represent apsaras or celestial nymphs, a common motif in the religious and royal art of Asia.
The Sigiriya paintings have been the focus of considerable interest and attention in both ancient and modern times. The poems in the graffiti on the Mirror Wall, discussed below, dating from about the sixth to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, are mostly addressed to the ladies in the paintings, who seem also to have been studied and reproduced in the eighteenth century by the Kandyan artists who painted the Damhulla murals. Antiquarian descriptions of the figures in the 'fresco pock,,[' date back to the 1830s. The first proper descriptions in the nineteenth century are based on the examination of the paintings by telescope from the plain below. The first person in modern times to find his way into the fresco pocket and come face to face with the paintings was an engineer named Murray of the Public Works Department. He made tracings, copied them in pastel and published a paper in 1891.
I he first real study of the paintings, however, begins with the commencement of archaeological operations at Sigiriya by H.C.P. Bell from 1894 onwards and the facsimile copies in oils made by Muhandiram D.A.L¬Percra in 1896-7.