Mughal miniatures share these basic characteristics,
but they also incorporate interesting innovations. Many
of these deviations results from the fact that European
prints and art objects had been available in India since
the establishment of new trading colonies along the
western coast in the sixteenth century. Mughal artists
thus added to traditional Persian and Islamic forms by
including European techniques such as shading and atmospheric perspective. It is interesting to note that European artists were likewise interested in Mughal painting—the Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn collected and
copied such works, as did later artists such as Sir Joshua
Reynolds and William Morris. These images continued
to interest westerners in the Victorian era, during the
period of Art Nouveau, and even today. [For a demonstration of Persian miniature painting, see http://vimeo.
com/35276945.]
The Depiction of the Ruler in Mughal
Miniature Painting
While Humayun was largely responsible for the importation of Persian painters to India, it was under Akbar that Mughal miniature painting first truly flourished.
Akbar maintained an imperial studio where more than a
hundred artists illustrated classical Persian literary texts,
as well as the Mahabharata, the great Hindu epic that
the emperor had translated into Persian from its original
Sanskrit.
Akbar also sponsored various books describing his
own good deeds and those of his ancestors. Such books
were expansive—some were five hundred pages long,
with more than a hundred miniature paintings illustrating the text. It is here that we see the first concentrated
focus on painted imagery dedicated to the Mughal rulers, and where the standards for such images are firmly
established. The “Patna’s Drawings” Album, created under the rule of Akbar’s celebrated decendant Shahjahan,
is a wonderful later example of this type of presentation.
The album is a continuation and fortification of the Mughal miniature painting tradition celebrating kingship.
The “Patna’s Drawings” Album
Albums such as the one of which our selected work,
the image of Shahjahan, is a part were generally made by
royal commission.37 Called muraqqa, they were intended
to serve as private luxury works, to be leafed through
and enjoyed at leisure by the emperor and his friends and
family. Such objects would have originally been preserved
in the imperial collection and passed along through generations. Considering their purpose and provenance, it
is quite surprising that only one mid-seventeenth-century imperial album of paintings and calligraphies has
remained intact and in its original binding. The British
Library holds this album, which was commissioned by
Prince Dara-Shikoh in 1633 and presented to his wife
Nadira Banu Begum in 1642. All of the other royal albums eventually left the imperial library, either in 1739
74
Portrait of the emperor Shahjahan, enthroned,
from the “Patna’s Drawings” Album.
when Nadir Shah of Persia sacked New Delhi, or in the
early nineteenth century, as antiquities dealers purchased
what was left from the increasingly weakened Mughal
court. Over time, many of the albums were broken up,
augmented with additional materials, and rebound. Certainly many were lost as well.
In general, such albums were of a consistent format
and style. The book was introduced with imperial seals
and calligraphy pages, noting and hailing the emperor
for whom it was commissioned. The albums included
portrait miniatures of the ruler, his ancestors, and other
members of the imperial family, as well as various dignitaries and holy men. These portraits were arranged
according to the hierarchy of the court and were often
supported by additional calligraphy elements. Many albums also included natural history studies, particularly
botanical imagery. Such foliate decoration was also often
seen in the borders of the various folio pages.
According to the Bodleian Library which holds it, the
“Patna’s Drawings” Album includes a total of forty-one
paintings, largely from the period of Shahjahan’s reign
USAD Art Resource Guide • 2015-2016