Album Page with Painting of a Seated Woman and Calligraphy

Artists

Description

Once part of an album assembled for most likely the Mughal ruler Jahangir (r. 1605–1627) or his son and successor Shah Jahan (r. 1628–1658), this page contains a Mughal painting by a renowned court painter, Keshav Das, depicting a seated woman in European dress in a bucolic landscape. It would have been painted after a European engraving, but by rendering the figure with locally meaningful accoutrements—a herding stick and a blue-and-white pouring vessel (kendi) in the shape of a bird—the Hindu painter has reinterpreted the European model of a Greco-Roman goddess as an Indian female cowherd (gopi) linked to the iconography of the Hindu god Krishna and his devoted gopis. Adorning the painting are verses extracted from different poems by Persian poets including the celebrated Jami and Nizami. Written in black nasta‘liq script within cloud bands, the calligraphic specimens are arranged in an illuminated frame comprised of an inner layer of small calligraphy and an outer layer of large calligraphy. The latter, attributed to the eminent nasta‘liq master Mir ‘Ali Haravi who also composed the text in the top and bottom bands, is written on buff-colored marbled paper and the gold ground is decorated with polychrome floral scrolls. The borders of the album page are decorated with finely painted gold floral illumination on blue paper, a design similar to those found in a number of famous Mughal royal albums.

Dimensions

Page: H. 40 × W. 26.4 cm (15 3/4 × 10 3/8 in.) Calligraphic frame: H. 20.6 × W. 14.9 cm (8 1/8 × 5 7/8 in.) Painting: H. 12.6 × W. 6.3 cm (4 15/16 × 2 1/2 in.)

Provenance

[Hassan Khan Monif, New York (by 1968)]. C. Adrian Rübel, Boston (by 1978), by descent; to his daughter, Adrienne Rubel Mohrig, Northfield, Minnesota (1978-2023), gift; to the Harvard Art Museums. Note: C. (Charles) Adrian Rübel (1903-1978, Harvard Class of 1926)