Pichwai painting of Shrinathji (Krishna) on cloth, Nathdwara tradition

Pichwai: The Painted Cloth Behind the God

August 17, 2026 Khinkhwab Team

Behind the image of the god hangs a cloth — and in the temple town of Nathdwara, that cloth is one of the great painted textiles of India, changed with every season and festival, painted in ground stone and real gold as an act of worship.

✨ Fun fact: The word pichwai simply means “that which hangs at the back.” It is swapped for a different cloth as the festival calendar turns, so the backdrop of the god is never the same for long.

Pichwai painting of Shrinathji on cloth, Nathdwara — A pichwai of Shrinathji — Krishna as a child, his left arm raised to lift Mount Govardhan, against a backdrop of flowers and cows. Museum of Art & Photography, via Wikimedia Commons.

The god, and his backdrop

The tradition belongs to the Pushtimarg devotional sect, whose beloved form of Krishna is Shrinathji — the god as a seven-year-old boy, his left hand raised in the act of lifting Mount Govardhan. His home is the temple at Nathdwara, near Udaipur. There Shrinathji is dressed, fed, sung to, and shown to his devotees eight times a day. The pichwai is part of that service — six or eight feet of starched cotton painted with lotus pools, mango groves, dancing peacocks, gopis and cows, setting the scene for each darshan.

Krishna with gopis Rajasthani painting 18th century Metropolitan Museum — Krishna with the gopis, Rajasthani painting, 18th century. Metropolitan Museum of Art (Public Domain). The lotus pools, peacocks and flowering trees that fill a pichwai’s background come from exactly this visual vocabulary.

Stone, and gold

A pichwai is painted in old mineral colours — ground stone and shell. The finest are heightened with tin and real gold. Gold laid onto cloth to honour the divine is precisely the impulse behind our own zari — whether painted onto the surface, as here, or woven in, as in a Banarasi. Two techniques, one devotion.

Handwoven Banarasi Katan Silk Kinkhab Meenakari Saree in Butter Yellow — Khinkhwab — Katan Silk Kinkhab Meenakari Saree in Butter Yellow — Khinkhwab. Gold zari woven into silk as an act of craft and devotion — the same instinct that places real gold on a pichwai cloth.

The thread we love

A cloth made to stand behind a god, painted in ground stone and real gold, changed with the seasons, by artists who never signed their names — the pichwai gathers together almost everything we believe about cloth. That is the spirit we bring to a Banarasi. Explore our handwoven Brocade Fabric collection.