Mathura art is usually contasted with art that is the artistic manifestation of Greco-Buddhism, and is a cultural syncretism between buddhism and what?
Mathura art Mathura art refers to a particular school of Buddhist art, which centered on the city of Mathura, in central northern India, during the period in which Buddhism flourished in India. The art of Mathura is usually contrasted with the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara. In particular there is a debate about the origin of the Buddha image and the role played by each school of art. Before the creation of an image of the Buddha, probably around the 1st century CE, Indian Buddhist art had essentially been aniconic, avoiding representation of the Buddha, but rather relying on its symbols, such as the Wheel of the Law or the Bodhi tree.
Academic art Academic art, or Academicism, is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts, which practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism, and the art that followed these two movements in the attempt to synthesize both of their styles, and which is best reflected by the paintings of William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Thomas Couture, and Hans Makart. In this context it is often called "academism", "academicism", "L'art pompier", and "eclecticism", and sometimes linked with "historicism" and "syncretism".