Gandhara

In the areas of the ancient Indian North-West, a frontier territory between very different worlds, corresponding to present-day Pakistan and part of Afghanistan, between the end of the first century BC. and the IV-V century A.D. a particular figurative art, with a predominantly Buddhist content emerged, commonly defined as the "art of Gandhara", characterized by the coexistence of classical (Hellenistic-Roman), Indian, Iranian and Central Asian, composed in a very original synthesis of formal, symbolic and philosophical languages.
The materials of choice for this production, which in addition to being sculptural, is also architectural - but which, judging by the rare fragments, must also have been pictorial - are schist, sometimes limestone, stucco and raw clay.