Perspectives on Persian Painting


Book Description

This is a detailed study of the illustrations to Amir Khusrau's Khamsah, in which twenty discourses are followed by a brief parable, and four romances. Amir Khusrau (1253-1325) lived the greater part of adventurous life in Delhi; he composed in Persian, and also in Hindi. From the point of view of manuscript illustration, his most important work is his Khamsah (Quintet'). Khusrau's position as a link between cultures of Persia and India means that the early illustrated copies of the Khamsah have a particular interest. The first extant exemplar is from the Persian area in the late 14th century, but a case can be made that work was probably illustrated earlier in India.




Indian Court Painting, 16th-19th Century


Book Description

A catalogue to accompany an exhibit held at the museum from March to July 1997. Color reproductions of 83 paintings are presented chronologically rather than in the usual separate sections on Mughal, Deccani, Rijput, and Pahari traditions. Kossak, associate curator of Asian art at the museum, offers an introductory essay. Distributed in the US by Harry N. Abrams. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Indian Miniature Paintings, C. 1590-c. 1850


Book Description

Indiase miniaturen, afkomstig uit de Mogulscholen en de Indiase vorstendommen, uit de periode 1600-1850.




Indian Miniature Paintings


Book Description




In the Mirror of Persian Kings


Book Description

A study of Perso-Islamic kingship in India, as a way to understanding the political and cultural history of Muslim courts in India and their legacy.




Mirʾāt al-quds (Mirror of Holiness): A Life of Christ for Emperor Akbar


Book Description

Emperor Akbar’s exceptional interest in Christianity is reflected in many ways. Among these was his commissioning in 1602 of a Life of Christ from his guest, the Jesuit priest Jerome Xavier, thus marking a singular moment in the relations between one of the greatest Muslim rulers and Catholicism. This fascinating text—translated into English for the first time—draws mostly on Biblical and apocryphal sources, but also reveals that in order not to antagonize his Muslim hosts, Father Jerome occasionally made concessions in his work. Of the three illustrated copies, the one used in this study and now in the Cleveland Museum of Art is the most important. Its twenty-seven high-quality miniatures were inspired by the text itself, resulting in unique interpretations of episodes that often do not find parallels in a European context.




Portraiture in South Asia since the Mughals


Book Description

One of the most remarkable artistic achievements of the Mughal Empire was the emergence in the early seventeenth century of portraits of identifiable individuals, unprecedented in both South Asia and the Islamic world. Appearing at a time of increasing contact between Europe and Asia, portraits from the reigns of the great Mughal emperor-patrons Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan are among the best-known paintings produced in South Asia. In the following centuries portraiture became more widespread in the visual culture of South Asia, especially in the rich and varied traditions of painting, but also in sculpture and later prints and photography. This collection seeks to understand the intended purpose of a range of portrait traditions in South Asia and how their style, setting and representation may have advanced a range of aesthetic, social and political functions. The chapters range across a wide historical period, exploring ideals of portraiture in Sanskrit and Persian literature, the emergence and political symbolism of Mughal portraiture, through to the paintings of the Rajput courts, sculpture in Tamil temples and the transformation of portraiture in colonial north India and post-independence Pakistan. This specially commissioned collection of studies from a strong list of established scholars and rising stars makes a significant contribution to South Asian history, art and visual culture.




"Prints in Translation, 1450?750 "


Book Description

Printed artworks were often ephemeral, but in the early modern period, exchanges between print and other media were common, setting off chain reactions of images and objects that endured. Paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, musical or scientific instruments, and armor exerted their own influence on prints, while prints provided artists with paper veneers, templates, and sources of adaptable images. This interdisciplinary collection unites scholars from different fields of art history who elucidate the agency of prints on more traditionally valued media, and vice-versa. Contributors explore how, after translations across traditional geographic, temporal, and material boundaries, original 'meanings' may be lost, reconfigured, or subverted in surprising ways, whether a Netherlandish motif graces a cabinet in Italy or the print itself, colored or copied, is integrated into the calligraphic scheme of a Persian royal album. These intertwined relationships yield unexpected yet surprisingly prevalent modes of perception. Andrea Mantegna's 1470/1500 Battle of the Sea Gods, an engraving that emulates the properties of sculpted relief, was in fact reborn as relief sculpture, and fabrics based on print designs were reapplied to prints, returning color and tactility to the very objects from which the derived. Together, the essays in this volume witness a methodological shift in the study of print, from examining the printed image as an index of an absent invention in another medium - a painting, sculpture, or drawing - to considering its role as a generative, active agent driving modes of invention and perception far beyond the locus of its production.




Imaging Sound


Book Description

The rulers of the Mughal Empire of India, who reigned from 1526 to 1858, spared no expense as patrons of the arts, particularly painting and music. They left as their legacy an extraordinarily rich body of commissioned artistic projects including illustrated manuscripts and miniature paintings that represent musical instruments, portraits of musicians, and the compositions of ensembles. These images from the basis of Bonnie C. Wade's study of how musicians of Hindustan encountered and Indianized music from the Persian cultural sphere. Combining ethnomusicological and art historical methods with history and lore, Wade has written a truly interdisciplinary study of cultural life on the Indian subcontinent. Wade focuses first on Akbar, showing how political and cultural agendas intertwined in the portrayal of Mughal court life. She then follows the depictions of music-making through paintings of Akbar's successors, Jahangir and Shah Jahan, to trace the gradual synthesis of Persian and Indian culture. Because music of the period was not notated but was transmitted orally, Wade relies on this wealth of visual evidence to reconstruct the musical life of the Mughals and its relation to the Mughal political agenda. As a major untapped resource, these images suggest new interpretations of the history of the Mughal Empire -- including original ideas about the role of patrons in the production of the arts and, importantly, the role of women in Mughal court life -- that are confirmed and complemented by the written sources of the period. Imaging Sound is a contribution to many fields in its unique combination of sources and methods: it is the study of musical change; of image-making in the pastand the methodological use of images as "texts" in the present; of the role of patronage in the Mughal Empire; and of the development of South Asian culture. In her synthesis of music, literature, art, and culture, Wade deepens our knowledge of the manner in which the orally transmitted tradition of Hindustani music came to be what it is today. The book is beautifully illustrated with more than 180 reproductions of Mughal paintings and manuscripts. These rare images are the basis for a study that is fully immersed both in current intellectual debates and in three centuries of Mughal cultural life.