This image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
Artwork Details
Use your arrow keys to navigate the tabs below, and your tab key to choose an item
Title:A Seated Nobleman
Date:ca. 1690–1700
Medium:Opaque watercolor on paper
Dimensions:Page: H. 9 5/16 in. (23.7 cm) W. 6 3/4 in. (17.1 cm) Painting: H. 7 15/16 in. (20.2 cm) W. 5 5/8 in. (14.3 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Promised Gift of the Kronos Collections, 2015
The bearded nobleman is seated on a striped, flat weave carpet (dhurri), wearing a turban with a feathered aigrette. Equipped with a curving sword and a push dagger (katar) secured to his midsection, he also wears a striped cumberbund (patka) and a long, patterned coat (jama) in Mughal style, all of these fashionable accessories denoting the subject’s high status. The nobleman also wears simple jewelry. He is probably a prince or an important courtier: the feather worn in his turban is an aristocratic distinction. The warm peori yellow of the flat background, the isolated figure, and the simple format of this painting relate the work to the string of “intensely realized” portraits of royal and everyday personalities that B.N. Goswamy and Eberhard Fischer believe were made by a family of artists attached to the court of Mankot in the kingdom of the same name. (1) For a related portrait in the Kronos Collections painted by the greatest of these artists, the Master at the Court of Mankot, see cat. no. 95. (1) See B.N. Goswamy and Eberhard Fischer, “The Master of the Court at Mankot, possibly Meju” in Milo C. Beach, Eberhard Fischer, B.N. Goswamy, eds., Masters of Indian Painting (Zurich: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 2011), pp. 501514.
Schatten? 1984?
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Divine Pleasures: Painting from India's Rajput Courts—The Kronos Collections," June 13–September 11, 2016.
The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world.
