How Indian artists imagined the birth of Christ

The birth of Jesus Christ – an important biblical event – was the subject of many paintings by Western artists, who often used the ideas of beauty and creativity prevalent there when depicting this event on canvas.

These works are some of the most widely available representations of Christian art, shaping the world’s view of this biblical event and subliminally excluding those outside the West from being influenced by it.

But over the centuries, Indian artists have sought to express their vision of the event by depicting the birth of Jesus and other Christian themes in their own style.

Some did it consciously, others unconsciously, but the end result is a whole work that breathes new life and meaning into the event of the birth of Christ and Christianity itself.

Here are some paintings from the history of Indian art that present the birth of Jesus from a unique local perspective.

The Mughal emperor Muhammad Jalaluddin Akbar is credited with introducing Christianity to northern India by inviting Jesuit missionaries to visit his court.

Missionaries brought with them scriptures and works of European art on Christian themes that influenced court painters. Akbar and his successors also commissioned many frescoes with Christian themes, and some court artists began to infuse these paintings with elements of Islamic art.

Neha Vermani, a South Asian historian, talks about a painting by Mughal court painters of Emperor Jahangir in a nativity scene that traditionally depicts Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus.

“The Mughal rulers saw themselves as ‘simple’ rulers, capable of maintaining harmony and balance in their kingdoms; they were “universal rulers.” Allowing different religions to co-exist was an integral part of how they saw themselves and wanted to be remembered,” says Ms Vermani.

The 18th-century painting below shows typical stylistic elements of Mughal art, including highly stylized figures, vivid colors, naturalism, and ornamentation.

Jamini Roy, who was born in 1887 in the modern Indian state of West Bengal, is known for creating a unique visual language by combining elements of Bengali folk art and Kalighat paintings, a distinctive art form that originated in the vicinity of a famous temple in the city of Kolkata.

Ashish Anand, CEO and managing director of art firm DAG, says art critic W. G. Archer once remarked that Christ represented a Santal figure (the Santals are an Indian tribal group) for Jamini Roy.

“The simplicity of Christ’s life and his sacrifices appealed to Roy, making his Christian paintings as important as those of Hindu mythology, all done in a vernacular modernist style that he made distinctly his own,” he says.

Born in 1902 in the western state of Goa, Angelo de Fonseca is credited with creating a unique Christian iconography that combined Eastern and Western influences with his Goan sensibility.

In his paintings, Mary is not depicted as a beautiful girl in a blue dress, but looks very much like an Indian woman with brown skin, dressed in a sari and wearing a mangalsutra (a traditional Indian ornament worn by married Hindu women).

The biblical scenes are set in local settings and have motifs and elements that appeal to Indian audiences.

With his art, he tried to counter the narrative that the West is the cradle of beauty and artistic creativity.

“Fanseco wanted to place Christianity—which was largely seen as a Western religious tradition—in the Indian subcontinent. It was from this longing that his watercolors painted Christianity anew,” Rinald D’Souza, director of the Xavier Center for Historical Studies, Goa, told the BBC.