Mughal Art and Paintings

In art, Mughal means the painting, architecture and other arts made in northern and central India under the Mughal emperors, who ruled from 1526. The Getty's art vocabulary dates the Mughal style from the mid-16th to the late 17th century and names its hallmark as a mingling of Persian and indigenous Indian influence. Mughal painting itself is best known for small, finely detailed pictures made for illustrated books and albums, and it went on into the 1700s in cities such as Lucknow and Murshidabad.

Sources: Getty AAT: Mughal · Cleveland Museum of Art: Posthumous portrait of Muhammad Shah · Victoria and Albert Museum: Dip Chand, William Fullerton

Mughal miniatures are small, minutely detailed pictures in opaque watercolor and gold on paper, made as pages of books and albums. Typical features are lifelike portraits, often in profile; close studies of animals, birds and flowers; crowded history scenes in which tiny inscriptions name the people; and wide decorated borders. The Cleveland Museum of Art describes the mature style of the 1590s as dynamic in composition but organized in space, with a new naturalism and three-dimensionality, and the V&A sees European conventions such as perspective and hovering cherubs fully absorbed by about 1630.

Sources: Cleveland Museum of Art: Basavana and Sur Das, The siege of Arbela · Victoria and Albert Museum: Bichitr, Asaf Khan · Victoria and Albert Museum: The emperor Alamgir (Aurangzeb) · Victoria and Albert Museum: Manohar, Jahangir in a garden

Mughal painting began in the mid-1500s and lasted into the 1700s. Akbar's father Humayun brought Persian painters to India, and Akbar's workshop began its first major project, the Hamzanama, in about 1562. Painting was at its most refined under Jahangir and Shah Jahan, whose reign ended in 1658. His son Aurangzeb later turned away from opulence and spent decades at war in the Deccan, which weakened the empire, the V&A says; in the 1700s Mughal-style painting carried on in Lucknow and Murshidabad, sometimes for British officials of the East India Company.

Sources: Victoria and Albert Museum: Hamzanama page (Hamza killing a lion) · Cleveland Museum of Art: Abd al-Samad, Hunting with falcons · Cleveland Museum of Art: Hashim, Shah Jahan, from the Late Shah Jahan Album · Victoria and Albert Museum: The emperor Alamgir (Aurangzeb) · Cleveland Museum of Art: Posthumous portrait of Muhammad Shah · Victoria and Albert Museum: Dip Chand, William Fullerton

Mughal painting combined Persian and Indian painting, and soon took in ideas from European art as well. The Cleveland Museum of Art describes Akbar's early Tuti-nama, of about 1560, as a book on which Indian artists worked with Persian masters to form a new style: its bright red background and composition are Indian, its delicate drawing is Persian. Mir Sayyid Ali, the first head of Akbar's workshop, trained Indian artists in Persian ways, and by the 1580s a new depth and naturalism appeared, possibly inspired by European prints and paintings.

Sources: Cleveland Museum of Art: Tuti-nama page · Cleveland Museum of Art: first Tuti-nama illustration · Cleveland Museum of Art: Portrait of a kneeling holy man · Cleveland Museum of Art: A mendicant bowing before a holy man

Mughal painting reached its zenith under three emperors in turn. Under Akbar (reigned 1556–1605) the imperial workshop was founded, and by the 1590s its painting had reached maturity, says the Cleveland Museum of Art. Jahangir (1605–27) prized portraits and studies of nature and gave Mansur the title Wonder of the Age, an honor only Abu’l Hasan shared, the V&A notes. Under Shah Jahan (1628–58), Cleveland says, imperial Mughal painting reached a pinnacle of refinement and formality.

Sources: Cleveland Museum of Art: Basavana and Sur Das, The siege of Arbela · Cleveland Museum of Art: Govardhan, A Courtier, Possibly Khan Alam · Victoria and Albert Museum: Mansur, Turkey cock · Victoria and Albert Museum: Mansur, Himalayan Cheer Pheasant · Cleveland Museum of Art: Hashim, Shah Jahan, from the Late Shah Jahan Album

Under Akbar, Mughal painting meant large illustrated books, made by teams. His workshop illustrated the Hamzanama, with about 1,400 paintings on cotton, the Tuti-nama, Persian translations of Babur's memoirs and of the Mahabharata (the Razmnama), the Thousand-Year History and his own chronicle, the Akbarnama. One artist often designed a page and another painted it, and their names were written in red ink below. The Art Institute of Chicago counts about fifty artists at work on the Akbarnama.

Sources: Victoria and Albert Museum: Hamzanama page (Hamza and Hura the genie) · Cleveland Museum of Art: Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot) · Victoria and Albert Museum: Baburnama page (Babur's Garden of Fidelity) · Victoria and Albert Museum: Razmnama page · Cleveland Museum of Art: Page of disasters, from the Tarikh-i Alfi · Victoria and Albert Museum: Akbarnama page (Akbar hunting with cheetahs) · Art Institute of Chicago: Akbarnama page

Under Jahangir (reigned 1605–27), painters made more single portraits, court scenes and studies of nature, many of them for albums. When rare animals reached the court, Jahangir had them described and painted: Mansur painted a turkey that arrived in 1612 and a zebra presented in 1621, the V&A says. In his troubled last years, LACMA explains, the emperor commissioned allegorical portraits that proclaim his justice and power, such as Emperor Jahangir Triumphing over Poverty, attributed to Abu’l Hasan, in which he shoots arrows at the figure of poverty.

Sources: Cleveland Museum of Art: Govardhan, A Courtier, Possibly Khan Alam · Victoria and Albert Museum: Nanha, Maharana of Mewar and Prince Khurram · Victoria and Albert Museum: Mansur, Turkey cock · Victoria and Albert Museum: Mansur, A zebra · LACMA: Emperor Jahangir Triumphing Over Poverty · Freer Gallery of Art (Google Arts & Culture)

The best-known Mughal painters include Daswanth and Basawan under Akbar; Mansur, Abu’l Hasan and Manohar under Jahangir; and Bichitr, Govardhan, Hashim, Payag and Balchand under Shah Jahan. Cleveland's Tuti-nama of about 1560 has pages by Daswanth, and the Art Institute of Chicago calls Basawan one of the leading painters of Akbar's studio. The V&A says only Mansur and Abu’l Hasan were honored with titles such as Wonder of the Age, and that Manohar, Basawan's son, painted some of the best-known portraits of Jahangir's reign. Harvard calls Payag, Balchand's brother, a master of historical narrative painting.

Sources: Cleveland Museum of Art: Dasavanta, Tuti-nama page · Art Institute of Chicago: Akbarnama page · Victoria and Albert Museum: Mansur, Himalayan Cheer Pheasant · Victoria and Albert Museum: Manohar, Jahangir in a garden · Victoria and Albert Museum: Bichitr, Asaf Khan · Cleveland Museum of Art: Hashim, Shah Jahan · Victoria and Albert Museum: Balchand, Mirza Abu'l Hasan · Harvard Art Museums: Payag, The Battle of Samugarh

The Hamzanama, or Book of Hamza, is the giant illustrated book of the adventures of Hamza that Akbar commissioned soon after he came to the throne. It was the first major project of the royal painting workshop, directed by the Iranian masters Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd al-Samad, and took about fifteen years, probably until 1577. Its 14 volumes held some 1,400 large paintings on cotton, and only about 200 survive. The MAK in Vienna holds 60, the largest group, among them Umar Defeats a Dragon; the V&A has 24.

Sources: Victoria and Albert Museum: Hamzanama page (Hamza killing a lion) · Victoria and Albert Museum: Hamzanama page (Hamza and Hura the genie) · MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna: Hamzanama (BI 8770) · MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna: Umar defeats a dragon (BI 8770-15)

The Akbarnama, or Book of Akbar, is the official history of Akbar's reign, written in Persian by his court historian Abu’l Fazl between 1590 and 1596. Akbar's artists illustrated it as it was being written: the V&A's copy, thought to be the first illustrated one, was painted by at least 49 artists, whose names appear in red ink beneath the pictures. A later copy was finished shortly before Akbar died in 1605; pages of it are in the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Sources: Victoria and Albert Museum: Akbarnama page (Akbar hunting with cheetahs) · Victoria and Albert Museum: Akbarnama page (building Fatehpur Sikri) · Art Institute of Chicago: Akbarnama page · Cleveland Museum of Art: Akbar-nama page (circumcision ceremony at Fatehpur Sikri)

Mughal painting was made for the Muslim Mughal emperors and their nobles, Rajput painting for the Hindu Rajput kings of Rajasthan. Mughal painters favored histories, true-to-life portraits and studies of nature; Rajput painters favored Krishna legends, Hindu epics and ragamala series, which picture musical modes. The two met often: Rajput kingdoms such as Marwar lived under the Mughal empire and married into its family, and the same drawings served as models for portraits of Mughal and Rajput royalty, the Cleveland Museum of Art says. The Getty calls the painting of Ajmer in Rajasthan an extension of the Mughal style.

Sources: Cleveland Museum of Art: Portrait of Suraj Singh Rathor · Cleveland Museum of Art: Portrait of Maharaja Rai Singh of Bikaner · Getty AAT: Ajmer (Mughal style in Rajasthan) · Art Institute of Chicago: Maharana Bhim Singh in Procession

Famous Mughal paintings are in the V&A in London, the MAK in Vienna, the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Cleveland Museum of Art. The V&A holds what is thought to be the first illustrated copy of the Akbarnama and Mansur's zebra; the MAK has the largest group of Hamzanama pages; the Freer has allegorical portraits of Jahangir; the Met has pages of the Shah Jahan Album; Cleveland has Akbar's Tuti-nama. The illustrated Padshahnama is in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle.

Sources: Victoria and Albert Museum: Akbarnama page (Akbar hunting with cheetahs) · Victoria and Albert Museum: Mansur, A zebra · MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna: Hamzanama (BI 8770) · Freer Gallery of Art (Google Arts & Culture) · LACMA: Emperor Jahangir Triumphing Over Poverty · The Met: Akbar With Lion and Calf · Cleveland Museum of Art: Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot) · Victoria and Albert Museum: Nanha, Maharana of Mewar and Prince Khurram

Yes. Late in his career, about 1656–61, Rembrandt made a series of unusually careful drawings of Mughal emperors and courtiers, studies of imperial Mughal portraits, the J. Paul Getty Museum says; its exhibition Rembrandt and the Inspiration of India showed them beside Mughal paintings with similar compositions, such as Manohar's Prince Daniyal from the Shah Jahan Album. Two of Rembrandt's Mughal drawings are in our collection: Shah Jahan and Shah Jahan and Dara Shikoh.

Sources: J. Paul Getty Museum: Rembrandt and the Inspiration of India

Yes. Mughal paintings were made between the 1550s and the 1800s, so they are in the public domain in the United States and in countries where copyright ends 70 years after the artist's death. You can download them free and use them for anything, including commercial projects. A few countries have their own rules on photographs of artworks, so check them if you publish outside the U.S.

Sources: Cornell University Library: Copyright Term and the Public Domain