RAS question
Kishangarh school of painting is famous for which painting?
Correct answer: (A) Bani Thani.
The Kishangarh school of painting is especially famous for Bani Thani, the portrait popularly called the Indian Mona Lisa.
Explanation
Bani Thani is the signature work associated with the Kishangarh school. It is the most famous painting of the school, painted during Maharaja Sawant Singh's reign by Nihal Chand, and is popularly compared with the Mona Lisa. Museums of India, National Portal and Digital Repository verifies the core identification: the object is titled Bani Thani, classified as a painting, placed in the Paintings gallery of the National Museum, New Delhi, and listed with Kishangarh as both style and school. Bani Thani holds a lotus and a cup and wears jewellery and costume in the portrait. Bani Thani, not a generic theme or folk form, is the Kishangarh school's signature painting.
Why the other options are wrong
- (B) Ragamala is a broad painting theme found across several schools, so it does not uniquely identify the famous Kishangarh work.
- (C) Pabuji ki Phad belongs to the folk-art tradition, whereas Museums of India, National Portal and Digital Repository classifies Bani Thani as a Kishangarh-school painting.
- (D) Tamasha is not a painting, so it cannot be the famous painting associated with the Kishangarh school.
Concept
Rajasthan's miniature-painting schools are closely associated with signature works. RAS repeats such pairings because they are high-yield links between regional courts, art styles and named cultural artefacts.