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Lot Essay
Although probably not in his hand, this miniature is inscribed 'amal ustad Mansur Nadir al-Zaman along the upper edge, and is likely to the work of a close - and talented - follower. A depiction of two vultures, including one red-headed vulture (Aegypius calvus) very similarly rendered to ours and signed by the master Mansur is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Stuart Cary Welch, Annemarie Schimmel, Marie L. Swietochowski and Wheeler M. Thackston, The Emperor's Album. Images of Mughal India, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1987-88, no.45, pp.173-75). The photographic precision in the depiction of the birds, and the relative fluidity of the background is typical of his style.
This miniature is one of a number that were mounted on folios from a manuscript of the Farhang-i-Jahangiri, a Persian lexicon written by Jamal al-Din Husayn around 1608. The manuscript appears to have been in the possession of the Parisian collector and dealer, Georges-Joseph Demotte, since eleven miniature paintings mounted on leaves of the manuscript are illustrated in his 1930 catalogue. Of those folios, a number of the miniatures laid down were from the 1604 Akbarnama.
For a list of dispersed pages see Milo Cleveland Beach, The Grand Mogul, Imperial Painting in India 1600-1660, Williamstown, 1978, p.41. See also Linda York Leach, Indian Miniature Paintings and Drawings in the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 1986, pp.65-72. Other folios from the same manuscript have been sold in these Rooms, 25 April 1995, lots 8-8A. More recently two were sold at Sotheby's, London, 24 October 2007, lot 34 and 16 June 2009, lot 3.
This miniature is one of a number that were mounted on folios from a manuscript of the Farhang-i-Jahangiri, a Persian lexicon written by Jamal al-Din Husayn around 1608. The manuscript appears to have been in the possession of the Parisian collector and dealer, Georges-Joseph Demotte, since eleven miniature paintings mounted on leaves of the manuscript are illustrated in his 1930 catalogue. Of those folios, a number of the miniatures laid down were from the 1604 Akbarnama.
For a list of dispersed pages see Milo Cleveland Beach, The Grand Mogul, Imperial Painting in India 1600-1660, Williamstown, 1978, p.41. See also Linda York Leach, Indian Miniature Paintings and Drawings in the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 1986, pp.65-72. Other folios from the same manuscript have been sold in these Rooms, 25 April 1995, lots 8-8A. More recently two were sold at Sotheby's, London, 24 October 2007, lot 34 and 16 June 2009, lot 3.