At the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

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At the Philadelphia Museum of Art, single of the world's finest private collections of Indian "miniature" paintings will be existinged for the first time in its entirety with the exhibit "Intimate Worlds: Masterpieces of Indian Painting from the Alvin O Bellak Collection" from March 2 end April 29. The exhibit features 90 paintings and drawings created in workshops across India through the whole extent of the course of four centuries, together with Indian metal vessels

Spanning the period from before the rise of Islamic Mughal authority in northern India during the 1500 to the heyday of the British Raj in the late 19th hundred years the exhibit showcases vivid illustrations of Hindu, Muslim and Jain religious stories; visions of life at court; formal and satirical portraits; evocations of the pleasures of love; and depictions of superhuman horror. The works not alone highlight the indigenous art that flourished in India unless also the stylistic developments that emerg when artists of common culture became exposed to others. Alvin O Bellak, who created the collection above the past three decades, has promised it as a bequest to the museum.

"One by dint of one, these intimately-scaled paintings add up to an astonishing panorama," said Darielle Mason, curator of Indian and Himalayan art at the museum. "From the high drama of an elephant fight or a great flying guardian spirit kidnapping an infant god to the mostly tender encounters of the human and the divine, the exhibition raises the curtain upon the lives, imaginings and ideals of India's kings and courtiers."

The exhibition's title is taken from an invitation to "Enter Madhava's intimate world." These words, from a 12th hundred devotional love poem, The Gita Govinda (Lovesong of the Dark Lord), are written forward one of the paintings in the collection and put in mind of the small scale of pictures that provoke the inner world of Indian courtly and religious life.

The exhibit is organized the one and the other chronologically and by region. Among the images produc for the Jains, whose faith emerg in about the 6th hundred B.C., is one of the earliest works in succession paper created in the Indian Subcontinent. The late- 14th-century manuscript page from western India, highlighted with precious lapis lazuli and gold pigments, displays a royal couple engaged in lively conversation. More than 30 of the images featured are from the northern Panjab Hills, an area that became known for its poignant landscapes and idyllic sights The exhibit also features about 35 courtly paintings--among the chiefly notable is a pair of mid-18th-century portraits showing a stout nobleman who was implicated in a machination to usurp the throne.

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