early hindu-sultanate painting 1500–1575

the golden age of mughal painting 1575–1650

John Guy

The period 1575 to 1650 encompasses the reigns of the Mughal emperors Akbar (r. 1556–1605), Jahangir (r. 1605–27), and Shah Jahan (r. 1628–58). The imperial court culture that developed under the direction of these three great emperors, resourced from the riches of an entire subcontinent, came to bedazzle the world. Ambassadors and merchants alike were sent from Iran, Spain, England, and many lesser powers to engage with this empire. Traders, missionaries, and diplomats first passed through the Portuguese enclave of Goa, and later the ports of Cambay and Surat, to do business with the Mughal court at Delhi, Fatehpur Sikri, or Agra.

When the young Akbar inherited this then fledgling empire, he also inherited a modest manuscript workshop, which his father, Humayun, had assembled during his exile in Kabul, and which came to Delhi with his invading army. Akbar clearly had empathy for the art of the book, and although reputedly semiliterate, he nurtured the creation of a great imperial library (kitabkhana) rich in illustrated manuscripts (Preface, Fig. 2). 1 Akbar’s biographer Abu’l Fazl recorded that the emperor enjoyed daily readings of these works, adding that “among the books of renown there are few that are not read in His Majesty’s Assembly Hall.” 2 In a painting from the second edition of the Akbarnama, Akbar is seen in evening discourse with two Jesuits, the carpeted floor scattered with books (Fig. 15). This duo included Antonio Monserrate, whose memoirs of his visit to Akbar’s court at Fatehpur Sikri in 1580 provide an insight into the emperor’s inquiring mind. 3

The kitabkhana was also home to the imperial atelier, whose scribes, painters, and librarians ensured that a steady flow of new manuscripts was added to the library. What manuscripts were produced was very much determined by the emperor himself. All three emperors of this period were instrumental in commissioning specific works and in many cases in directing which painter should receive the royal instruction. Abu’l Fazl tells us that Akbar visited

Figure 15. Akbar in discourse with the Jesuits Rudolf Aquaviva and Antonio Monserrate, at Fatehpur Sikri, 1580: page from the Akbarnama, painted by Nar Singh, 1597. Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (Ms 3, f.263b)

the kitabkhana regularly, rewarding with salary increases those calligraphers and painters who pleased him with the excellence of their work. 4 Over time, such intense royal attention inevitably shaped the development of style in the studio, as artists strived to win the attention and favor of their imperial patron. Each of the three emperors in turn directly and personally shaped style, although each in a different way, according to their own aesthetic and personal aspirations.

The imperial studio was not confined to the principal capital alone. Branch workshops appear to have functioned at secondary capitals, and painters—who often held military rank and could be expected to serve in times of need—routinely accompanied the emperor on tours and campaigns, recording events as instructed, rather in the manner of a war artist or photographer today. Manuscript paintings of the period provide accurate depictions of all the stages of book production, from paper making, burnishing, calligraphy and painting, marginal illumination, and gilding to finally binding (Fig. 16). 5 For the first time in the history of Indian art, the artists were permitted to incorporate their own portraits in marginalia and, even more remarkably, on occasion in the primary pictures depicting the emperor himself.

Under Akbar, the imperial painting workshops expanded exponentially, employing some hundreds of artists and artisans recruited from across the subcontinent. Hindu painters made up a significant percentage and were singled out for praise in the A’in-i Akbari section of the Akbarnama for their remarkable skills. 6 The catalyst for this expanded studio appears to have been the extraordinary demands that were placed on the atelier producing the Hamzanama. Iranian trained painters worked alongside Indian Muslim and Hindu artists, generating the fusion of styles that characterizes early Mughal art. To add to the mix, Akbar avidly collected all things exotic, and according to the contemporary observer Monserrate, he routinely had them copied in his imperial workshops. 7 He was particularly fond of European paintings and engravings, which entered the imperial library collection largely as diplomatic gifts and as a form of evangelizing propaganda supplied by the Jesuits. 8 A copy of the Royal Polyglot Bible (1568–72) was delivered to Akbar only two years after its publication in Antwerp (Fig. 17). These sources had an immediate impact on the direction of Mughal painting, providing new solutions to perspective and atmospheric rendering, tonal modeling and chiaroscuro, grisaille, and other modeling tools. Portraiture, especially

Figure 16. Calligraphic folio by Mir Ali, Iran, ca. 1550. Remounted with marginal paintings of the stages of manuscript production: page from a Jahangir album, ca. 1600. Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., Purchase (F1954.116r)

the studied profile, took on a new importance as a signature motif of the imperial image. 9 Again, the A’in-i Akbari provides the confirmation of this: “His Majesty himself sat for his likeness, and also ordered to have the likeness taken of all the grandees of the realm,” and “an immense album was thus formed,” the earliest reference to the assembly of an imperial muraqqa, a practice much favored by Jahangir and especially Shah Jahan.

Manohar Active ca. 1582–1620s, at the Mughal courts in Lahore, Delhi, Allahabad, and Agra; son of Basawan

Remarkably, two portraits of Manohar are preserved, one in which he is depicted as a young teenage apprentice already entrusted with commissions befitting more senior artists and the other by his contemporary Daulat, painted some twenty-five years later. 16 As the son of Basawan, Manohar had the title of khanazadan (born at court) and was privileged to gain an early entrée into the court atelier. His long career spanned four decades, two emperors, and the ateliers in Lahore, Delhi, Allahabad, and Agra. Like his eminent father, Manohar cultivated great skill at working in a variety of styles. But he excelled most in composing history paintings that conveyed a story with fidelity and clinical clarity. His contribution to the first edition of the Akbarnama (1596–97, the Victoria and Albert Akbarnama) demonstrates his mastery of theatrical composition and his extraordinary gift for finely executed descriptive detail (No. 17). His assembled court scenes with multiple portraits of courtiers were without rival and were achieved with carefully constructed compositions in which the interplay of surface pattern provided the unifying visual element.

Unlike the works of some of his contemporaries, such as Abu’l Hasan, Manohar’s portraiture rarely exhibits a psychological dimension; it appears equally concerned with fidelity in the rendering of jewels, fabrics, and faces. The remarkable depiction of the enthroned Prince Salim, with its radical placement of an obliquely viewed throne and uncompromisingly passive profile portrait of the future emperor, is a tour de force in emotional detachment. Henceforth, Manohar was Salim-Jahangir’s painter of choice. He set new standards for the group portrait, typically for his darbar scenes in which all those of rank are assembled before the emperor. He retained this position until other luminaries such as Abu’l Hasan, Daulat, and Govardhan, for example, attracted the emperor’s favor. When Jahangir’s memoirs were written in 1618, Manohar was no longer listed among the favored artists of the day. 17

Nonetheless, Manohar’s lasting legacy is the celebration of imperial Mughal painting’s central concerns—the glorification of the person of the emperor and the propagation of his achievements. He was both chronicler and propagandist par excellence of the Mughal court. His imperial patrons, Akbar and Jahangir, regarded themselves as discerning connoisseurs. Under the latter, Manohar increasingly had to devote his energies to creating images for the emperor’s self-edification alone. His late group portraits reveal the degree of formulaic reproduction of figure and facial types that ultimately was his undoing as a court favorite.

Above: Portrait of Manohar, by Daulat, from the Gulshan Album, ca. 1610. Golestan Palace Library, Tehran

17 Akbar hunting in a qamargha, or the humiliation of Hamid Bhakari: page from an Akbarnama manuscript Mughal court probably at Lahore, dated by association 1597 Opaque watercolor, ink, and gold on paper; painting: 8 7 ⁄16 x 5 in. (21.4 x 12.7 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Theodore M. Davis, 1915 (30.95.174.8) Published: Beach, Early Mughal Painting (1987), fig. 85; Kossak, Indian Court Painting (1997), no. 13

This folio is from one of the great manuscripts of the reign of Akbar, the second edition of the Akbarnama. The principal theme is not the one that dominates the composition—the deadly slaughter of wild animals who have been herded and corraled in a qamargha— but the one at lower left—the humiliated figure of shaved-headed courtier Hamid Bhakari, who is paraded while seated backward on a mule. The four-day hunt in 1567, and Bhakari’s disgrace, were described in detail in the Akbarnama; they signal both the emperor’s absolute power over his domain and his magnanimity.