The South Asian rooms of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London revel in the rich splendour of Mughal painting, with its flattened perspectives, bustling locales, and bold colour palettes made up of scarlet reds and burnt oranges, amber yellows and golds, and subtly complementing shades of viridian green and Persian blue.
The Mughal Empire stretched over the Indian subcontinent between the early sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Mughals were Muslims of Mongol origin: the founder of the empire Babur could trace his descent from both Chagatai Khan, the second son of Genghis Khan, who inherited the lands of the Chagatai Khanate between the Aral Sea and Altai Mountains, and Timur, the founder of the Timurid dynasty.
By the turn of the sixteenth century, political infighting and conflict with the Uzbek leader Muhammad Shaybani were putting a squeeze on the Timurids. Following the loss of his homeland Farghana and his repeated failure to retake Samarkand, Babur was forced to base himself at Kabul. Seeking refuge from the Uzbeks, he eventually moved his forces into northern India, and established the Mughal Empire upon the First Battle of Panipat in 1526.
Babur laid the capital of the Mughal Empire at Agra, and it shifted between Agra, nearby Fatehpur Sikri, and Lahore, before settling in 1648 in Shahjahanabad, which is known today as Old Delhi. The walled city of Old Delhi was constructed between 1638 and 1648 by the emperor Shah Jahan, whose reign heralded a golden age of Mughal architecture.
During the course of his thirty-year rule, Shah Jahan presided over the construction of the Taj Mahal in Agra (1632-1653); the Red Fort, which served as the emperor’s residence in Delhi (1648); the Jama Masjid, the largest and most famous mosque in the capital (1650-1656); and the Shalimar Gardens in Lahore (1641) and Shalimar Bagh in Delhi (1653), both inspired by the Shalimar Bagh in Srinagar which the emperor Jahangir had devised as a ‘garden of delight’ in 1619. The Mughal Empire would reach its greatest extent under Shah Jahan’s successor, the emperor Aurangzeb, before declining rapidly in the century following his death in 1707.
Babur had been passionate about Persian culture, to which end he cultivated a close relationship with the Safavids. The connection was consolidated when Babur’s son, Humayun, was forced by the rise of the short-lived Suri Empire to spend fifteen years in Persia in exile. Humayun recovered his kingdom in 1555 with the help of the Safavids, in the process extending the scope of the land which he would leave one year later to his son Akbar.
The arts prospered during Akbar’s reign as Mughal Emperor. With Persian now entrenched as the official language of the empire, Persian culture mixed with local Indian customs, and Akbar upheld the laws of Islam while embracing Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, nascent Sikhism, and aspects of Christianity and esoteric belief. The tolerant atmosphere and the diverse array of influences encouraged the distinctive forms of Mughal art.
The Mughal school of architecture began to flourish under Akbar, while scholars of various faiths gathered in the centres of empire to debate, study, and teach. Under Akbar, Sanskrit literature including the Upanishads was translated for the first time into Persian and Arabic. The Mughal Empire also tripled in size, now stretching across the full breadth of the subcontinent.
Mughal painting also blossomed. Formally the style linked the tradition of Persian miniature painting with Western influences drawn from illuminated manuscripts and prints. Like the Persians, the Mughals painted miniatures with richly decorative borders, which they used to illustrate books or collected separately in albums called muraqqa. Yet Mughal painting quickly took a more realistic bent in its depiction of animals, plants, and people, incorporating biographical elements drawn from the diaries of the Mughal emperors, and portraying figures in profile with their bodies half-turned towards the page.
The bold colours and lively scenes of the Mughals were painted in gold and opaque watercolour on paper. A master artist would typically draw the outlines of an illustration, with their junior filling in the colour before the master returned to add the final touches. A third artist occasionally contributed their expertise in portraiture, or added other points of detail.
Beyond the predominant influences of Persia and India, Mughal painting can therefore evoke something of the Trecento, the early flourishing of Italian Renaissance art. To European audiences the sense of movement may seem redolent of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, while the strong rhythmic line and blocks of vivid colour also resemble ukiyo-e. Mughal art abounds in ornate detail and expressive gestures, with a stylised transition between foreground and background and an elevated perspective. Later artists would become looser in their compositions and freer in their use of perspective, as equestrian portraits and love scenes became commonplace.
Much of the Mughal painting on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum comes from the Akbarnama, or Book of Akbar. Conceived as the official chronicle of Akbar’s reign, it was commissioned by Akbar and written in Persian by Abu’l Fazl between 1590 and 1596. Abu’l Fazl was Akbar’s vizier and court historian, and part of a talented family: his brother Faizi served as Akbar’s poet laureate.
Between 1592 and 1594, at least forty-nine different artists worked to illustrate the chronicle. The Victoria and Albert Museum acquired the Akbarnama in 1896 from Frances Clarke, the widow of Major-General John Clarke, who had served in India as the Commissioner of Oudh from 1858 to 1862.
Produced towards the end of Akbar’s reign, the Akbarnama shows a highly refined form of Mughal painting. At this point the artists of Akbar’s court were well-versed in the craft of illustration. Their style had developed with remarkable cohesion through the course of earlier commissioned works: the Tutinama or Tales of a Parrot, which took Akbar’s studio fifteen years to complete; the Hamzanama or Epic of Hamza; Gulistan or The Rose Garden; the Darabnama or Book of Darab; and the roughly contemporaneous Khamsa of Nizami, which remains in the collection of the British Library, with five detached sheets held by the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.
A second Akbarnama was commissioned later in Akbar’s reign, and completed between 1602 and 1603. In contrast to the Akbarnama on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum, this lesser-known manuscript features a cooler palette of blues and greens and brown washes.
Two illustrations from the Akbarnama currently on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum serve to exemplify the form: Rai Surjan Hada Making Submission to Akbar which was designed and finished by Mukund and painted by Shankar, and Bullocks Dragging Siege-Guns up a Hill which was designed by Miskina and painted by Paras.
The paintings depict scenes from the same military campaign. Towards the end of 1568, Akbar set out with an army of more than 50,000 troops in the direction of Ranthambore Fort, today one of the six Hill Forts of Rajasthan which together comprise a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Passing through Delhi and stopping to pay homage at his father Humayan’s tomb, by February the Mughals were laying siege to the fort, already renowned as one of the most dauntless in India.
Within a couple of months, Akbar and his Mughal army had secured the fort at the expense of the Hada Rajputs. In the process Akbar completed his conquest of the vital region of Rajputana. The triumph proved the impetus for his decision to move the Mughal capital a short distance west, from Agra to Fatehpur Sikri.
Bullocks Dragging Siege-Guns up a HillĀ displays the Mughals and their bullocks in the arduous process of positioning the large cannons which would fire upon Ranthambore Fort. Bombarded for more than a month as the Mughals gained much of the surrounding territory, on 21 March, Rai Surjan Hada finally submitted. Rai Surjan Hada Making Submission to Akbar shows the Hada Rajput leader bowing in submission to Akbar, who sits proudly enthroned under a canopy within his imperial camp.
Both works of art were completed in 1589, and painted in opaque watercolour and gold on paper. Rai Surjan Hada Making Submission to Akbar is defined by the gold detail and luxurious orange of Akbar’s throne, by the bands of red and amber yellow with green trimmings which make up his encampment, and by the throngs of people who pack the route between the camp and the fort. A dreamlike vista in the top right corner shows a lone tree perched on a rocky outcrop.
In contrast,Ā Bullocks Dragging Siege-Guns up a Hill shows only a slither of the imperial camp, boasting the same rich colour scheme in the bottom right. Its depiction of figures is more fluid as they coalesce in strain to drag Akbar’s cannons uphill. The cliff face is mottled and shaded, and the foliage is more detailed and appears to flap in the wind. Where Rai Surjan Hada Making Submission to AkbarĀ impresses through its bold use of colour and capacity to lead the eye on a course from camp to fort,Ā Bullocks Dragging Siege-Guns up a Hill compels by means of its lively and variegated texture, as its cannons fire off in a puff of smoke.
In theĀ third volume of the Akbarnama, called theĀ Ain-i-Akbari and packed with administrative detail, Abu’l Fazl listed for special praise seventeen of the master artists who had worked as part of Akbar’s studio. Abu’l Fazl also recounted Akbar’s own sense of the spiritual value inherent in art:
‘I cannot tolerate those who make the slightest criticism of this art. It seems to me that a painter is better than most in gaining a knowledge of God. Each time he draws a living being he must draw each and every limb of it, but seeing that he cannot bring it to life must perforce give thought to the miracle wrought by the Creator and thus obtain a knowledge of Him.’
Miskina and Mukund were among the seventeen royal artists on Abu’l Fazl’s list. Though he was not one of the oldest artists in Akbar’s studio, Miskina worked on most of the illustrated manuscripts which were commissioned during Akbar’s reign. By the time of the Akbarnama, he had become one of the main composers of illustrations. He specialised in the design of animals, asĀ Bullocks Dragging Siege-Guns up a HillĀ aptly demonstrates.
One of Miskina’s separates shows Saint Christopher carrying the Christ Child, as the artist illustrated his own version of the scene based on a print. The illustration shows how European art came to influence the Mughal painters, often brought to Akbar’s court by Jesuit missionaries. Meanwhile Mukund busily established his talent through the 1580s, and composed prolifically across the later manuscripts of Akbar’s reign.
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V&A, Rai Surjan Hada Making Submission to AkbarĀ :Ā http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O9608/rai-surjan-hada…
V&A, Bullocks Dragging Siege-Guns up a Hill:Ā http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O9611/painting-miskina/
V&A, ‘Life and Art in the Mughal Court’:Ā http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/l/life-and-art-in-the-mughal-court/
J.P. Losty, ‘A Prince’s Eye: Imperial Mughal Paintings from a Princely Collection; Art from the Indian Courts’ (Francesca Galloway sale catalogue, London: 2013):Ā https://www.academia.edu/4651733/A_Prince_s_Eye…
The Met, ‘The Art of the Mughals after 1600’:Ā http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/mugh_2/hd_mugh_2.htm
