The Gupta Empire was ruled by the Gupta dynasty during the period of around 240 to 550 B.C and it is truly marked as the Golden age of Indian culture and art. The examples showing the excellence of their cultural creativity are magnificent through the creative architecture, sculpture, and painting. Even various subjects covering science, astronomy, religion, and philosophy had reached to the level of excellence during this period. The peace and prosperity existed in the empire under leadership of Guptas enabled artists to deliver their best. The creation of monumental temples during the Gupta period remains as architectural wonders. The cave temples of Elephanta and structural temples of Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu are enduring legacy Gupta rulers. The art of the Gupta Empire mainly includes:

Buddhist sculptural work had flourished during the Gupta period, often described as the `golden age` in Indian history. It had lasted for an enormous period of time. Examples can be cited through the magnificent stone specimens in Deogarh in Jhansi, at Bhitergaon in Kanpur and the Ajanta Caves in Maharashtra, portraying excellence in Gupta architecture and sculpture. Another field of Gupta excellence was their metallurgical skill. Various copper images of Buddha reflect the workmanship of the Gupta period. Origin of the Dravidian style of architecture can be observed to have commenced during the Guptas. Hellenistic sculptural works continued to maintain its hold during that era, due to its tremendous visual impact on the beholder. During the 4th and 5th centuries, when much of northern India was under the dominion of the Guptas, Indian sculpture entered what is now called the `classical phase`. Terracotta work, like other mediums, was significantly developed. Pretty large and luxuriant plaques were used to adorn brick stupas and Hindu temples from Sind to Bengal.

With the Gupta period a lengthy evolution- both formal and iconographic, came to full realisation with some of the greatest sculptures ever created anywhere in the world. It was an age of universal accomplishment, a classical age, as described in Goetz`s words, `a perfect, unsurpassable style of life`. The age`s measures of form and taste determined the entire following course of art- not only in India, but also far beyond the country`s borders.

Current Gupta art is irresistibly religious or, like the Ajanta frescoes, beautifies a religious establishment. Buddhism and Jainism continued to prosper, and more intricate images of the Mahayana pantheon made their appearance. The earliest existing freestanding temples also date from this time, though few outlive from the hundreds, if not thousands, that must have been constructed to house both illustrations of the gods or lingas. Yaksas and nagas were substituted as independent cult images (leaving rare cases) by the gods and goddesses of the two great theistic cults.

The Ajanta Sculptures: The sculptures & wall paintings at the Ajanta cave are marvelous example of the greatest and most powerful works of Guptas. The themes of sculptures and paintings from the Ajanta depict the various lives of the Buddha. The colorful and vibrant art pieces at Ajanta are famous not only for observing details of nature and the urban landscape, but the architecture and furnishing, elegant attire and alluring ornaments on the images are marked with importance. These sculptures carry importance for showing perceptive delineations of a variety of human characters, expressions and moods through its appearance. The most well known work from the Ajanta caves is the "Bodhisattva Padmapani, which is a colorful image portraying the Buddha in Bodhisattva holding a lotus flower.

The Elephanta Sculptures: The masterpiece of Gupta`s art is the rock temple at Elephanta near Bombay. The temple structure contains a powerful, eighteen-foot statue of the three-headed Shiva, known as Trimurti. Each head of statue represents one of the roles of Shiva: a creator, preserver and a destroyer. This statue shows the excellent skills in rock carving. The Gupta period also saw dynamic building of Hindu temples that followed the tradition of having architecture that comprising of a hall and a tower.

All the sculptures produced throughout the Gupta Empire can be marked for having the appearance of relatively uniform "classic" style. The style was spread in other parts of India and in the countries of South and Southeast Asia. The Gupta style in sculpturing has greatly influenced the art of north Indian kingdoms in later period after the end of the Gupta dynasty. There were two main artistic centers for sculpture production: At Sarnath, the images of Buddha with clinging drapery are produced while at Mathura the image following the pattern of string folds in the drapery are created. Unfortunately, very few monuments built during Gupta reign are able to survive today. Some more examples of presentation of Gupta architecture are found in the Vaishnavite Tigawa temple at Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh, which is built in 415 CE and another temple at Deogarhnear Jhansi, which is built in 510 CE. Similarly, at Bhita in Uttar Pradesh has a number of ancient Gupta temples, most of them are in ruins.

Great civilizations are forever complex, and Gupta civilization was no exemption to the rule. Sculpture in Gupta period pointed parallel paradoxes- an amalgamation, according to Goetz`s phrase, `of the dainty with the earthy, of the balanced and harmonious with a marked skill and sympathy in depicting grotesques`.

The first dated sculptures in a full-fledged early Gupta style are from Vidisa and the close by Udayagiri Caves in Madhya Pradesh. Three decrepit but inscribed Jina images of late 4th century are in the Mathura tradition, but if a common divisor of the early Gupta style is to be discovered anywhere, it is in the rock-cut sculpture at Udayagiri. The caves are also the only memorials with an association, although indirect, with one of the Gupta royals, because an inscription on the outside of one of them, by a minister of Chandragupta II (c. 380-414), tells us that it was the attendance upon his king that he, a man from Pataliputra, had come there, possibly in connection with Chandragupta, and eventually triumphed in the campaign against the western Ksatrapas The caves, all Hindu and at ground height, leaving a single Jain cave half-way up the Hill, are of insignificant importance architecture ally, only one contains interior columns. A great deal of the sculpture is outside, on prepared surfaces of rock. The most distinguishing images are the four-armed standing Vishnus with unembellished cylindrical crowns, standing stiff-legged in samapada, one of them flanked by ayudhapurusas, personified weapons or symbols, which are among the bewitching inventions of the Gupta period. The most commanding of these images, with barrel chest, gigantic rounded shoulders and rather firmly handled legs, is the Kumara Cave, the earliest of all the immeasurable defenders of Hindu shrines, termed pratlharas in north, especially in south, that they are the biggest and most extraordinary. Characteristically, for the early Gupta style, their muscular thighs contrasted, almost preposterously with the dainty pleats of the tab-ends of their belts and sashes. Durga vanquishing the demon buffalo is represented thrice- besides Cave 4 She stands in the same position as the earliest instance of this image in Mathura, Her left arm awkwardly pressing down on the beast`s haunch, whereas besides Cave 6 a great relief is covered in determinedly conceptualised aquatic imagery with etched wavy lines, symbolising the water lotus and two lonesome little men, plausibly indicating the god Ocean, a negligible mythological figure.

Snakes were an essential genre of sculpture during 5th century. Some nagarajas and naginis from the apex of a disappeared pillar in Firozpur, a few miles away, have visibly extended serpent hoods; they and another pair in the Sand Museum are very much built in the Udayagiri style. Toe Museum also possesses three Bodhisattvas, which may be as late as during the last part of 5th century. One, smoothly round, with an authoritative presence, may be the figure from a pillar-top, cited in an inscription, a speculation to which holes bored into the pleated siras chakra, or halo, possibly to fasten on a lengthy copper nimbus, lends weight. Four seated Buddhas inside the processional path of the great stupa, one at each entry with moon-like fleshy facts, are related to the Bodhisattvas. They have gorgeously beautified haloes and large attendee figurines. Excluding that they have no pedestals, their stylistic resemblances are thus with Mathura and western Uttar Pradesh, rather than with areas further east. In all probability, the images mentioned in a mid-fifth century inscription have the disheartened glance, hereafter connected with Buddhas in the Gupta tradition.