A compact Lord Ganesha sculpture, carved from granite and imbued with lots of engraved detail. As a particularly hard (6 on the Mohs scale) and richly textured medium, granite demands a lot of skill on the part of the artisan. The murti that you see on this page is a fine example of such skill.

It depicts the son of Shiva-Parvati in His usual childlike stance, seated with His limbs spread about Him. Of His four hands, the anterior left cradles a laddoo and the right wields the piece of tusk that He has broken off in order to pen the Mahabharata. The features of His elephant face, the adornments on His chubby child’s body, and the details of the crown on His head - each of these are conveyed with precisely executed engravings of an off-white colour.

Given the proportions of this Ganapati sculpture and the medium in which it has been carved, a Ganesha murti such as this one would look great in both natural (outdoor) and artificial (indoor) light settings.