rather than the Raja himself who worshipped Krishna.  Sometimes it was not the ruling family but members of the merchant community who sponsored the artists and, occasionally, it was even a pious lady or devout princess who served as patron.  Such differences of stimulus had vital effects and, as a consequence, while the cult of Krishna came increasingly to enthrall the northern half of India, its expression in art was the reverse of neat and orderly.  Where a patron was so imbued with love for Krishna that adoration of the cowherd lover preceded all, the intensity of his feeling itself evoked a new style.  There then resulted the Indian equivalent of pictures by El Greco, Grunewald or Altdorfer—­paintings in which the artist’s own religious emotions were the direct occasion of a new manner.  In other cases, the patron might adhere to Krishna, pay him nominal respect or take a moderate pleasure in his story but not evince a burning enthusiasm.  In such cases, paintings of Krishna would still be produced but the style would merely repeat existing conventions.  The pictures which resulted would then resemble German paintings of the Danube or Cologne schools—­pictures in which the artist applied an already mature style to a religious theme but did not originate a fresh mode of expression.  Whether the greatest art resulted from the first or second method was problematical for the outcome depended as much on the nature of the styles as on the artist’s powers.  In considering Indian pictures of Krishna, then, we must be prepared for sudden fluctuations in expression and abrupt differences of style and quality.  Adoration of Krishna was to prove one of the most vital elements in village and courtly life.  It was to capture the imagination of Rajput princes and to lead to some of the most intimate revelations of the Indian mind.  Yet in art its expression was to hover between the crude and the sensitive, the savage and the exquisite.  It was to stimulate some of the most delicate Indian pictures ever painted and, at the same time, some of the most forceful.

The first pictures of Krishna to be painted in India fall within this second category.  In about 1450, one version of the Gita Govinda and two of the Balagopala Stuti were produced in Western India.[67] They were doubtless made for middle-class patrons and were executed in Western India for one important reason.  Dwarka, the scene of Krishna’s life as a prince, and Prabhasa, the scene of the final slaughter, were both in Western India.  Both had already become centres of pilgrimage and although Jayadeva had written his great poem far to the East, on the other side of India, pilgrims had brought copies with them while journeying from Bengal on visits to the sites.  The Gita Govinda of Jayadeva had become in fact as much a Western Indian text as the Balagopala Stuti of Bilvamangala.  With manuscript illustrations being already produced in Western India—­but not, so far as we know,