There was once an entire generation that grew up on a steady visual diet of the two great epics of ancient India — the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. It did not matter that they were aired on Sunday mornings at 9.30 am, a time modern civilisation now reserves for gym guilt and scrolling through reels of strangers making coffee. Back then, families willingly sacrificed their precious weekend sleep. Grandmothers insisted on ritual baths before anyone settled down before television sets that looked like ambitious cardboard boxes. Streets would empty, tea stalls would fall silent and, for one sacred hour every week, India collectively postponed life itself. For four years, the epics held the country in a trance powerful enough to make even the neighbourhood gossip pause mid-sentence.
In today’s fractured attention economy, where even a three-minute video is considered “too long”, it is difficult to imagine anything captivating an entire nation in quite the same way. Yet the art world occasionally throws up reminders that mythology still possesses the power to obsess, consume and inspire. Renowned Italian painter Giampaolo Tomassetti has been in the news recently for his monumental paintings based on scenes from the Mahabharata. His fascination with the epic was far from a passing interest. The series represents five years of research into the text, followed by another 12 years spent creating 25 massive paintings depicting some of the epic’s defining moments.
Blending the techniques of the European Renaissance with Indian imagery, Tomassetti’s lifelong engagement with the Mahabharata began in 1981, when a publishing house in Florence commissioned him to illustrate books on Vedic literature. One assignment led to another, and before long, the artist had wandered into the labyrinth of Kurukshetra. His vivid canvases, bursting with theatrical colours and movement, are now housed at the Museum of Spiritual Art in Florence.
Tomassetti is hardly alone in this artistic cross-pollination. Art history is filled with creators who became enchanted by mythologies entirely removed from their own cultural upbringing. India’s celebrated painter Krishen Khanna, who turns 101 this July, first encountered biblical imagery when his father returned from England in 1932 with a copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. Summer holidays spent at a vicarage deepened his interest. From the late 1960s onwards, Khanna often juxtaposed stories from the Bible with distinctly Indian imagery, proving that spirituality travels far more easily than human beings do.
Nandalal Bose, the iconic artist best known for illustrating the original manuscript of the Constitution of India, similarly found himself drawn towards Buddhism after visiting the Ajanta caves in 1909. His meticulous study of the frescoes gradually transformed his artistic style. Later, a trip to China with Rabindranath Tagore in 1924 exposed him to Buddhist art and its messages of compassion. This became his visual bridge towards a unified Asian identity to counter Western imperialism.
Throughout history, artists have repeatedly interpreted ancient texts through the lens of their own cultures. Great epics effortlessly transcend borders because their emotional truths remain universal. Human beings, after all, may disagree on politics and cricket teams, but these stories of righteousness, love and duty will always continue to resonate across civilisations.
