How Indian artists imagined the birth of Christ

The birth of Jesus Christ – a seminal biblical event – has been the subject of many paintings by Western artists, who often applied the ideas of beauty and creativity prevalent there while depicting the event on canvas.

These works are among the most widely available representations of Christian art, shaping the way the world views this biblical event and subconsciously disempowering those outside the West.

But over the centuries, artists in India have tried to express their vision of this event by painting the birth of Jesus and other Christian themes in their own style.

Some have done so consciously, some unconsciously, but the end result is a body of work that breathes new life and meaning into the event of Christ's birth and Christianity itself.

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

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

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

Neha Vermani, a historian of South Asia, talks about a painting made by Mughal court artists that depicts Emperor Jahangir in the nativity scene that traditionally includes Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus.

“The Mughal rulers saw themselves as 'just' rulers, able to maintain 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 features typical stylistic elements of Mughal art, including highly stylized figures, vibrant colors, naturalism, and ornamentation.

Born in 1887 in what is now the Indian state of West Bengal, Jamini Roy is credited with creating a unique visual language by combining elements of Bengali folk art and Kalighat paintings, a distinctive art form that originated near a famous temple in the city of Kolkata.

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

“The simplicity of Christ's life and his sacrifice appealed to Roy, making his paintings of Christian themes at least as important as those of Hindu mythology, all rendered in the vernacular style of modernism that he made distinctively his own,” he says.

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

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

Biblical scenes are set in local settings and include motifs and elements that speak to Indian audiences.

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

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