Four Folios from the Emperor's Album (nos. 55.121.10.39, .13, .21,.4r)

This celebrated imperial Mughal album (muraqqa‘), known as the Shah Jahan, or Emperors’, Album originally consisted of fifty leaves containing paintings, illuminated pages, and calligraphy. Thirty-nine of these date from the seventeenth century, while the remaining eleven date from the early nineteenth century. Of the earlier folios, the first few were commissioned by Emperor Jahangir (r. 1605–27), but it was under the patronage of his son Shah Jahan (r. 1627–58) that most of the leaves were added. The nineteenth-century folios contain copies of the earlier subjects as well as some new compositions. This album belongs to a family of related imperial albums that share similar formats and subject matter, most notably the so-called Wantage and Minto albums in British collections, particularly the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin.

Most of the calligraphic panels in the Shah Jahan Album were executed by the sixteenth-century Persian master Mir ‘Ali Haravi, who first practiced his art at Herat and later at Bukhara. His writing was so prized in Mughal India that it was collected, mounted in albums, and illuminated. Here (no. 55.121.10.4r), the illumination takes on a special character, departing from the more usual arabesque-based motifs seen in Indo-Persian ornament and moving toward a naturalism typical of Mughal painting.[1] The inclusion of natural life as part of the decoration of text pages is also seen in an earlier Mughal Gulistan of Sa‘di in the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, London, which contains over two thousand bird images.[2] In the Museum’s folio, six lines of Persian poetry written out by Mir ‘Ali in nasta‘liq script are set against a burnished gold ground that contains landscape features as well as various animals and birds, including a pair of sambar deer, nilgai antelope, white goats, mynah birds, robins, starlings, egrets, and shrikes. The lyrical poetry framing the composition is by the poet Hilali Chughata’i (two couplets are in Chagatai Turkish).

Recorded observations of the emperors Babur (r. 1526–30) and Jahangir reflect the Mughal interest in the natural world; indeed, modern science has recognized the latter as having made at least two original contributions to zoology.[3] Jahangir’s remarkably acute interests in the flora and fauna of India are expressed in the sensitive natural studies produced by his leading artist, Mansur, as demonstrated in this album by the nilgai, or blue bull (no. 55.121.10.13), one of several such works therein.[4] This beast may have roamed in Jahangir’s zoological garden, where Mansur, a multifaceted artist who earlier in his career had been trained in the art of illumination, would have been able to record details such as the broken horn and the whorl of hair at the base of the animal’s neck (the slightly less detailed brushwork on the body of the beast, however, may indicate the hand of an assistant). While this natural study depicts a relatively humble subject, a local animal, other works by Mansur portray more exotic creatures, including a zebra (which arrived at court as a gift in 1616), a turkey-cock (arriving in 1612), and a chameleon.[5] Although Mansur was not the only artist who addressed such natural themes, he was an acknowledged master of the genre, gaining mention in Jahangir’s memoirs and earning the title Nadir al-‘Asr, Wonder of the Age.

Grand compositions such as no. 55.121.10.21, which shows a bejeweled Shah Jahan with a radiating nimbus astride a magnificent pie-bald stallion, were part of the imperial Mughal image disseminated around the world.[6] The ruler’s firm black ink inscription names the artist as Payag, further confirmed by a recently discovered artist’s signature in a minuscule inscription located on the extension of the saddle.[7] In many ways the hard-edged formality of this composition epitomizes the Shah Jahan painting style, yet demonstrated equally is Payag’s facility with royal portraiture, a somewhat rare genre for him. This crystalline imperial likeness and the layering of patterns and shapes in the area of the saddlecloth stand in contrast to the artist’s use of smoky landscapes, dark tones, and washy colors in the Padshahnama (Royal Library, Windsor).[8] Of note is the subtle radiance around the point of the emperor’s spear. Also appearing in folios of that royal manuscript is the emperor’s same piebald steed.[9] This particular formula of Shah Jahan in equestrian mode proved to have lasting popularity, judging from the number of later copies made, including one in the Emperors’ Album itself.[10]

A shamsa (sun or sunburst in Arabic) traditionally opened or closed imperial Mughal albums. Worked in bright color, predominantly lapis, and several tones of gold, this meticulously designed and unerringly precise radiating medallion from the Shah Jahan Album (55.121.10.4r) is enriched by painted arabesques, fantastic flowers, cloud bands, birds, and insects. The Emperors’ Album contains two such masterpieces, this one centered around the name of Shah Jahan written in an elaborate tughra (cipher) style and its companion containing the seal imprint of his successor and later owner of the album, Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707). Specifically trained masters of ornament painted such illuminations. Although many Iranian prototypes for this rosette can be cited, the Mughal shamsa differs from them in its heightened three-dimensionality and warm coloring.[11] The importance of solar symbolism in many aspects of Indian and Islamic visual representation and courtly life made such radiating motifs particularly meaningful to their royal patrons.[12]

Navina Haidar in [Ekhtiar, Soucek, Canby, and Haidar 2011]

Footnotes:

1. Welch 1987, pp. 124–25, no. 22.

2. The Art of the Book in India. Exhibition, British Library, Reference Division, London. Catalogue by Jeremiah P. Losty. London, 1982, p. 87, no. 58.

3. Alvi, M. A., and A. Rahman. Jahangir: The Naturalist. The National Institute of Sciences of India Monograph, 3. New Delhi, 1968, p. 5.

4. Published in Welch 1987, pp. 178–81, no. 47; Welch 1985, p. 216, no. 142; Welch 1987, p. 145, no. 111.

5. The Grand Mogul: Imperial Painting in India, 1600–1660. Exhibition, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.; Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Asia House Gallery, New York. Catalogue by Milo Cleveland Beach, with Stuart Cary Welch and Glenn D. Lowry. Williamstown, Mass., 1978., pp. 137–43, provides a list of the artist’s major works; see also
Blunt, Wilfred. “The Mughal Painters of Natural History.” The Burlington Magazine 90, no. 539 (February 1948), pp. 48–50.

6. Published in Welch 1987, pp. 202–3, no. 59.

7. A recent examination of the painting by Robert Elgood resulted in this new discovery.

8. See “The Two Worlds of Payag—Further Evidence on a Mughal Artist.” In Indian Art and Connoisseurship: Essays in Honour of Douglas
Barrett, edited by John Guy, pp. 320–41. New Delhi, 1995. for a discussion of Payag’s style.

9. King of the World: The Padshahnama, an Imperial Mughal Manuscript from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle. Exhibition, National Museum of India, New Delhi, and other venues. Catalogue by Milo Cleveland Beach and Ebba Koch with Wheeler [M.] Thackston. London and Washington, D.C., 1997, p. 52, no. 17, pp. 72–75, no. 29.

10. Welch 1987, p. 257, no. 86.

11. Ibid., pp. 80–81, no. 1; p. 149, no. 114; Welch 1985, pp. 236–37, no. 156.

12. Skelton, Robert. “Imperial Symbolism in Mughal Painting.” In Content and Context of Visual Arts in the Islamic World: Papers from A Colloquium in Memory of Richard Ettinghausen, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 2–4 April 1980, edited by Priscilla P. Soucek, pp. 177–91. University Park, Pa., and London, 1988, pp. 181–82.


Rosette Bearing the name and Titles of Emperor Shah Jahan


As patron, Shah Jahan is best known for his great buildings, especially the Taj Mahal and the mosques and palace and fort complexes of Agra, Lahore, and Delhi. But he was also a highly discerning patron of jewelers, jade craftsmen, metalworkers, and textile makers, as well as of painters and calligraphers. Too often, paintings made under his guidance are dated to his father's reign; and he is insufficiently credited with innovative marvels such as the present shamsa (little sun) from one of his albums. The illuminator, whose name is unknown, lavished many months of devotion on it, losing himself in a myriad of rosettes, garlands, and swooping birds, which should be viewed from several angles to appreciate the varied work of the gold. It is a superb painting, to be ranked with the finest Mughal figural miniatures, and to be compared with other masterpieces of arabesque design, such as a floor spread in the Metropolitan Museum (27.115) and a carpet in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon (T.72, no. 153 in this catalogue).

Although many Iranian prototypes for this rosette could be cited, they differ strikingly in spirit. Shah Jahan's illuminator envisioned the sunburst not flat, as in Iranian prototypes, but with characteristically Mughal three-dimensionality; and his coloring is tropically warm as opposed to the cool blues and golds of the Iranian mode, which seem in comparison classically restrained. Shah Jahan's shamsa is romantic, even passionate, radiating sunlight and expressive of the emotional undercurrents at his court and in his temperament.

The Kevorkian Album contains a second, very similar rosette, bearing the titles of Emperor Aurangzeb. Two other rosettes, uninscribed but apparently by the same patient, highly disciplined but visionary artist, are in the Windsor Castle Padshah-nama, and a third was formerly in the Rothschild collection.[1]

[Welch 1985]

Footnotes:

1. The second Kevorkian example will be reproduced in the full study of the Kevorkian Album now in preparation. The shamsas in the Windsor Castle Padshah-nama have not been published. For the Rothschild shamsa, see Beach, Milo Cleveland. The Grand Mogul. Ex. cat., Williamstown, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1978, cover,


Rosette Bearing the Name and Titles of Shah Jahan


This superb , or little sun, is a lattice of stylized foliate and floral motifs surrounded by phoenixes and other birds flying amid Chinese-style clouds. It forms a spatial setting for the central calligraphy, which reads, "His Majesty, Shihabuddin Muhammad Shah Jahan, the King,Warrior of the Faith, may God perpetuate his kingdom and sovereignty." The page epitomizes Shah Jahan's love of the sumptuous and precious. The intense jewel-like colors and intricately woven arabesques of the central rosette find their closest parallels in contemporaneous carpets, while the gilt drawings beyond it, freed from the usual restraints of a rectangular margin, are particularly fluid and harmonious. The album at the Metropolitan Museum, for which this was made, includes another page in which the calligraphy of the central cartouche was obliterated by a teardrop-shaped stamped seal impression containing the titles of Aurangzeb, Shah Jahan's usurper son.


Steven M. Kossak in [Kossak 1997]


MMA 55.121.10.39 recto–Shamsa

Meticulously designed and painted arabesques, often enriched by fantastic flowers, birds, and animals, were painted by specially trained masters of ornament who may also have provided designs for architectural details. Working in bright colors and several tones of gold–some mixed with copper, others with silver–these remarkable artists produced hypnotic, eyecatching fanfares to imperial albums and manuscripts.

The author has written about this shamsa (little sun): "Athough many Iranian prototypes for this rosette could be cited, they differ strikingly in spirit. Shah Jahan's illuminator envisioned the sunburst not flat, as in Iranian prototypes, but with characteristically Mughal hree-dimensionality; and his coloring is tropically warm as opposed to the cool blues and golds of the Iranian mode, which seem in comparison classically restrained. Shah Jahan's shamsa is romantic, even passionate, radiating sunlight and expressive of the emotional undercurrents at his court and in his temperament."[1]

The Kevorkian Album contains a second, very similar rosette, bearing the titles of Emperor Aurangzeb (MMA fol. 40r; pl. 5).

Stuart Cary Welch in [Welch et al. 1987]


1. Welch, Stuart Cary. India: Art and Culture, 1300–1900. Exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1985, cat. no. 155.

55.121.10.39 verso–'Unwan (right side)

THIS FOLIO and MMA fols. 39v and 38v (nos. 3 and 4 and pls. 3 and 4 in this volume) contain the same opening paragraphs from a treatise on calligraphy by Mir-'Ali as do MMA fols. 4Iv, 4r, and 40v (nos. 6–8 and pls. 6-8 in this volume). The translation of this passage is given in the text for no. 7 and pl. 7 in this volume.

Annemarie Schimmel in [Welch et al. 1987]

Inscription: Inscription in Arabic in tughra script at center:
حضرت شهاب الدین محمد شاه جهان پادشاه غازى خلد الله ملکه و سلطانه
His Majesty Shihab al-Din Muhammad Shah Jahan, the king, the vanquisher,
may God perpetuate his dominion and sovereignty.
(From: Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ekhtiar, Soucek, Canby, and Haidar, eds., 2011, p. 358)

Translation of main calligraphy:
Boundless praise and countless lauds to the Creator! The
painted album of the sky is one fragment from the works of
His bounty and excellence, and the well-cut illuminated sun
is one paper-scrap from the lights of His beauty and elegance.
[Praise to Him who is] the artist, the pen of whose
creative art is the writer of the script of the
heart-ravishing beauties; the inventor, the line of whose invention
is the painter
(Translated by Annemarie Schimmel, 1987)

In Persian language and Nasta’liq script:
حمد بیحد و سپاس بي عد خالقي را که مرقع/ مصور سپهر قطعه ایست از آثار فضل و/ کمال او و مقطع منور رقعه ایست/ از انوار حسن و جمال او صانعي که قلم/ اصناعش محرر خطۀ خوبان دلرباست/ و مبدعي که رقم ابداعش مصور

Jack S. Rofe, Scotland (1929; sale, Sotheby's, London,December 12, 1929, no. 130, to Kevorkian); [ Hagop Kevorkian, New York, from 1929]; [ Kevorkian Foundation, New York, until 1955; gift and sale to MMA]

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Gold," April 14–September 9, 1973, no catalogue.

New York. Asia Society Galleries. "Calligraphy in the Arts of the Muslim World," January 11, 1979–March 11, 1979, no. 85.

London. Victoria and Albert Museum. "The Indian Heritage: Court life and arts under Mughal rule," April 21, 1982–August 22, 1982, no. 66.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "INDIA !," September 14–September 14, 1985, no. 155.

New York. The Hagop Kevorkian Special Exhibitions Gallery, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Emperor's Album: Images of Mughal India," October 21, 1987–February 14, 1988, nos. 1 and 3.

Los Angeles. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "Romance of the Taj Mahal," December 17, 1989–March 11, 1990, no. 81.

Toledo, OH. Toledo Museum of Art. "Romance of the Taj Mahal," April 28, 1990–June 24, 1990, no. 81.

Richmond. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. "Romance of the Taj Mahal," August 23, 1990–November 25, 1990, no. 81.

Canberra. National Gallery of Australia. "The Vision of Kings: Art and Experience in India," November 25, 1995–February 4, 1996, no. 98.

Melbourne. National Gallery of Victoria. "The Vision of Kings: Art and Experience in India," February 23, 1996–April 28, 1996, no. 98.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Indian Court Painting: 16th–19th Century," March 25–July 6, 1997, no. 26.

New York. The Hagop Kevorkian Special Exhibitions Gallery, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Nature of Islamic Ornament, Part IV: Figural Representation," September 16, 1999–January 30, 2000, no catalogue.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Balcony Calligraphy Exhibition," June 1–October 26, 2009, no catalogue.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Making The Met, 1870–2020," August 29, 2020–January 3, 2021.

"Gold." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Winter 1972/1973 vol. 31, no. 2 (Winter 1972/1973). Inside front color, ill. p. 74 (color).

Welch, Stuart Cary. Imperial Mughal Painting. New York: George Braziller, 1978. pp. 98–99, ill. pl. 30 (color).

Welch, Anthony. Calligraphy in the Arts of the Muslim World. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1979. no. 85, pp. 9, 194, ill. p. 9 (color).

Welch, Stuart Cary. India! Art and Culture 1300–1900. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1985. no. 155, pp. 236–37, ill. (color).

Welch, Stuart Cary. The Islamic World. vol. 11. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987. pp. 147, 149, fig. 114 (color).

Welch, Stuart Cary, Annemarie Schimmel, Marie Lukens Swietochowski, and Wheeler M. Thackston. The Emperors' Album: Images of Mughal India. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987. nos. 1, 3, pp. 80–81, 83, 85, ill. verso pl. 3 (color); recto pl. 1 (color).

Pal, Pratapaditya. Romance of the Taj Mahal. London; Los Angeles: Thames and Hudson, 1989–1991. no. 81, p. 89, ill. (b/w).

Schimmel, Annemarie. "Islamic Calligraphy." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s., vol. 50, no. 1 (Summer 1992). (v) pp. 38–39, ill. fig. 47 (color).

Brand, Michael. "Art and Experience in India." In The Vision of Kings. Canberra, Australia: National Gallery of Australia, 1995. no. 98, p. 140, ill. (color).

Kossak, Steven M., ed. Indian Court Painting 16th–19th century. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997. no. 26, pp. 53, 56, ill. (color).

Ekhtiar, Maryam, Priscilla P. Soucek, Sheila R. Canby, and Navina Haidar, ed. Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1st ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011. no. 250A, pp. 340, 358–60, ill. p. 358 (color).

Khafipour, Hani, ed. "Source Studies of the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal Literate Communities." In The Empires of the Near East and India. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019. p. 206, fig. 4.3 (b/w).