Bronzes

Daily rituals and festivals at the Brihadishwara temple involve images of gods and goddesses that are carried around and outside the temple, and the Cholas created bronze images for this purpose. Finely wrought bronze idols, clothed in silk vestments and adorned with flowers and gold jewelry studded with precious stones, were mounted on large poles and carried in processions by temple priests. Musicians and dancers performed in front of these images while royalty, nobles and the townspeople participated in the rituals.

Shiva and his consort, Parvati, in their many forms were a favorite subject of Chola metal casters, along with other gods and goddesses in the Hindu pantheon. The Nataraja or dancing form of Shiva with his four arms and surrounding ring of fire has become synonymous with Chola bronzes. 

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Metal casters of the Chola period used the lost wax method to create bronzes. A model of the sculpture was first created using a mix of beeswax and camphor. The model then was thickly coated with clay and fired to hardness. During the firing, the beeswax model melted away leaving a hard hollow clay mold. A molten bronze alloy was then poured into the clay mold and allowed to cool and harden. Finally, the clay mold was broken and the bronze sculpture inside was cleaned, finished and polished. As the molds were broken, each bronze was a unique piece!

 

Chola bronzes are renowned for their extremely fine details, intricate hairstyles and jewelry, realistic expressions, proportionate limbs and hands held up in graceful dance mudras. Given the complexity of the lost wax method, these thousand-year-old bronzes represent a level of artistry and skill that are hard to replicate even with modern tools and technologies.

 

According to the temple inscriptions, Rajaraja Chola, and his sister Kundavai and others had donated more than 60 exquisite bronzes to the Brihadishwara temple. Out of these only two sets, Nataraja and his consort Sivagami and the bronze of Rajaraja and his queen Lokama Devi, are currently located in the temple. They were repatriated to the temple in 2018 by the Sarabhai Foundation and the Calico Museum.

 

While there are only a few original bronze sculptures remaining inside the Brihadishwara temple, the museum at the Thanjavur Maratha Palace houses an impressive collection of Chola and later bronzes that includes several Nataraja statues. Other notable collections may be found at Government Museum in Chennai, the Pondicherry Museum, and the Indian Museum, Kolkata. Chola bronzes are also displayed at the New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Chicago Art Institute, the British Museum, and Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.