ASCRIBED TO KAMAL, PROBABLY AGRA, MUGHAL INDIA, CIRCA 1610

This illustration comes from a dispersed copy of the Shahnama produced in Mughal India in the late Akbar or early Jahangir period. Six illustrations from the manuscript from the Brunet Collection were sold at Sotheby’s, London, 13 July 1971, lots 138-140 (lot 138 now in the Cleveland Museum of Art, acc.no. 2013.314) and 7 December 1971, lots 54-56. Most identify the name of the artist, sometimes accompanied by a number, in the margin, however the margins of the present lot have been pasted over with illuminated Farhang-i Jahangiri margins obscuring the inscription.

Some of the named artists, like Kamal, the painter of the present lot, or Haydar Kashmiri work in a recognizably Mughal-trained style, while a number of the paintings by artists including Dawud and Mirza Ghulam are much more Persian or Central Asian in appearance. One of the Brunet folios depicting Tur being slain by Manuchehr, now in the Keir Collection, was catalogued by B.W. Robinson as Bukhara (Islamic Painting and the Arts of the Book, London, 1976, p. 198, no.III.342, plate 72). The combination of traditions coexisting in this manuscript is testament to the generous patronage of the Mughal emperors, who attracted talented artists from across the Persianate world to the court at Agra.

The painter Kamal was the son of the Akbar period artist Khem. Working in the later period of Akbar’s reign he is recorded as working on the illustrations of manuscripts for ‘Abd al-Rahim Khan-i Khanan, a poet and Akbar’s first minister, who on one occasion gifted a Jahangir a rare volume of Yusuf wa Zulaykha copied by Mir 'Ali worth a thousand mohurs. This raises the possibility that the present Shahnama was produced for the same patron. Further illustrations from this Shahnama have been sold in these Rooms, 27 October 2023, lot 81 and 4 October 2012, lot 18 and in Sotheby’s London, 26 April 2023, lot 40.