Tanjore

Fine china and traditional Indian art was layered over them: Tanjore paintings of gods encrusted with gold, Ravi Varma prints that their owners had embellished with silks a century earlier.

By far the most popular piece, according to museum officials, is “Moving Constant,” a gilded depiction of Indian gods and goddesses by N. Ramachandran and V. Anamika that nods to the traditional Tanjore style of painting.

The Peabody Essex Museum says it will expedite the handover of the mid-19th century Tanjore portrait to the Department of Homeland Security to cooperate with an ongoing international art fraud investigation into dealer Subhash Kapoor.

Tanjore Balganesh, a medicinal chemist who heads the Indian Open Source Drug Discovery program in Bangalore for neglected diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis, is skeptical, however.

Tanjore and the Carnatic were shortly after annexed to their dominions.