The largest retrospective of Raja Ravi Varma's ubiquitous works goes online

In a year that started badly and quickly became worse, a narrative of things remembered and celebrated has lifted dreary days.

Among these is the fact that several biographers agree that 2020 marks 150 years of Raja Ravi Varma’s first commissioned painting, a family portrait of Krishna Menon, a sub-judge of the Calicut Court.

This also marked the beginning of a life lived travelling to paint portraits at various royal courts. A life where Varma would famously go on to democratise art through a printing press that took his vision of Hindu gods to virtually every Hindu household, and in