"Portrait of Zamana Beg, Mahabat Khan", Folio from the Shah Jahan Album

Manohar|Mir 'Ali Haravi

recto: ca. 1610; verso: ca. 1530–40 · Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper · Islamic Art

This page comes from an album that combined Mughal paintings executed during the reigns of Shah Jahan and of his father and predecessor, Jahangir; classic examples of sixteenth century Persian calligraphy, highly prized by India's Muslim rulers; and nineteenth-century copies of seventeenth-century Indian paintings. Like many other seventeenth-century illuminated margins in the album, this one reveals a new Mughal taste for highly naturalistic flowering plants shown in profile. This flower style had its origins in flower paintings commissioned by Jahangir on a trip to Kashmir in the spring of 1620. Within ten years the style was adapted to architectural decoration and thereafter became popular in the decoration of all media.

Artist

Manohar|Mir 'Ali Haravi

Date

recto: ca. 1610; verso: ca. 1530–40

Medium

Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper

Department

Islamic Art

Credit line

Purchase, Rogers Fund and The Kevorkian Foundation Gift, 1955