- #HGWORLD
- #HGCREATORS
- #HGEXPLORE
- #HGVOICES
- #HGSHOP
- CAREERS
- ABOUT US
- CONTACT US
I was seventeen years old when I first watched Peter Brook's Mahabharata. Originally a 9-hour-long stage production that was later edited into a 6-episode limited series for television and a 3-hour film for theatrical and DVD release, the landmark production brought together an ensemble cast of actors from 16 different countries and musicians from Iran, Turkey, and Denmark to create a truly international adaptation of the epic unlike anything ever done before or since. Watching Vittorio Mezzogiorno as Arjuna, Bruce Myers as Ganesha and Krishna, and Mallika Sarabhai as Draupadi opened my eyes to the far-reaching power and possibilities of the Mahabharata story. It made me realise how thoroughly universal the epic is and how these epics — be it the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Iliad, or the Odyssey — belong not only to one nation, region, or religion but the entire human civilisation.
When I came across Giampaolo Tomassetti's oil paintings of scenes from the Mahabharata earlier this week, I was, once again, reminded of the universality of the epic. An Italian artist, illustrator, and sculptor, Tomassetti began his career as a muralist, collaborating with architects on restoration and redecoration of old buildings and frescoes, and making reproductions of classical paintings in European museums. In 1997, he won the Concorso Nazionale del Dipinto Storico (the National Contest for Historic Paintings) with a large oil painting measuring 300-cm x 900-cm, now showcased in the Modica Town Hall, Sicily.
In 1981, Tomassetti was working as for a publishing house in Florence when he was commissioned to make illustrations for books about Vedic literature. This project was the beginning of his lifelong fascination with Indian epics. Over the next seven years, Tomassetti produced several paintings and illustrations in the neo-Renaissance style, a fundamental journey for his artistic development. Meanwhile, he continued to study the Mahabharata. Since 2003, he has painted several large-scale oil paintings depicting pivotal scenes from the Sanskrit epic in his distinctive style.
Tomassetti's oil paintings — often made on large canvases and in bold colours — engage with the civilisational epic of Ancient India in all its narrative drama. Merging European and Italian Renaissance influences with Indian decorative elements and the spiritual ethos of 'dharma', the driving force of the Mahabharata narrative, the elaborately drawn and brightly coloured paintings capture the intrigues, struggles, and moral ambiguities underlined in the Mahabharata through dramatic images in lush oil colours that harken back to the heroic imagery of biblical oil paintings from the Renaissance period.
In Tomassetti's paintings — now displayed in the Museum of Spiritual Art (MOSA) at Villa Vrindavana, Florence — the ancient Indian epic finds a new voice. The East meets the West, and the result is a vision of the Mahabharata that transcends borders and speaks to the universality of the epic. Like a verse from the Mahabharata says:
"What exists in the world exists within the Mahabharata,
what does not exist in the Mahabharata, does not exist in the world."
