Description
The Mughal School of Painting in India coincides with the period of Muqhal dynasty, Coming into prominence during tha reign of Akbar in the later half of the sixteenth century, it attained its apogee underr tha imperial dilettante, Jahangiir, The reign of his successor* shah Jahan* marks the first step in its decline, while under the unsympathetic rule of Aurangzeb, its death-knell was rung. It lingered on, a decadent art, under the Nawabs of Oudh, until the end of the eighteenth century, and practically ceased to exist with the advent of the British rule. AS a school Of painting, its duration was a short one, extending over onl/ two and half centuries, and it has been aptly referred to as not exactly a School, but more of a brilliant episode in the history of Indian art. The ancestral home of Mughal painting was originally in Samarkand and Herat where, under the Timurid kings in the fifteenth century, Persian art reached its zenith. An offshoot of Central Asian Art, the term, Indo-Persian, or more precisely, still, Indo-Timurid, is regarded by some authorities as a more suitable name for this particular development of Indian painting, A bloodied and mutilated elephant fills the bottom left of the Mughal miniature painting Fall of the Giant (1564–79), its writhing trunk and dappled skin portrayed in painful, exquisite detail. Above the elephant leaps a hero about to hurl the villain to his death, surrounded by celebrating musicians and bystanders scrambling to get out of the way. Intricate architectural details and an elaborately tiled floor provide a busy backdrop to the chaos. This odd scene, violent and gorgeous, is one of 1,400 illustrations from a manuscript of an epic tale commissioned by the Mughal emperor Akbar. It’s a powerful example of the miniature painting tradition that thrived under his rule.