THE PAINTING MUGHAL INDIA, CIRCA 1590; THE CALLIGRAPHY SIGNED MIR 'ALI, FIRST HALF 16TH CENTURY

Originally dating to the 7th century, the story of Layla wa Majnun is a tale of doomed love upon which the well-known 12th century medieval Persian narrative poem by Nizami Ganjavi was based. The tale was told and retold and became a frequently illustrated text in both Iran and India. From different tribes, the lovers were forbidden to marry and Majnun, driven to madness by his love for Layla, retreated to the desert where he is often depicted as an emaciated ascetic, as seen here.

The story was frequently illustrated by the artists of Akbar’s court but by the early years of Jahangir’s reign (r.1605-27), Mughal patrons began to favour paintings made independently of manuscripts. Whilst earlier artists had been inspired to paint various individual dramatisations from the story, artists under Jahangir began to favour the scene of Majnun’s meeting with Layla in the wilderness, as seen here, as the story’s defining moment. There are a number of nim kalam (tinted drawings) of the subject that exist from this period. The earliest of the group, which is at the British Museum, is firmly attributed to Miskin (AC1920, 0917, 0.5), and another, at the Freer and Sackler Galleries, bears a partly effaced inscription to the same artist and is attributed to the early 17th century (F1945.29). A third, in a private collection, is also attributed to Miskin, circa 1605 (published by Pratapaditya Pal, Court Paintings of India. 16th–19th Centuries, New York,1983, no. M38).

Like the painting offered here, these drawings are tinted with a delicate blush of colour, and an elegant amount of shading and texture. Most of them depict a vast array of animals, embedding them into the scene. Molly Emma Aitken observes that whilst none of these paintings are identical, the animals inhabit each in a similar manner, and each repeats elements from others in the group. She writes that the dominant theme of the group seems to be the “compositional confection and its aesthetic possibilities” and that whilst the animal kingdom is plausibly inserted into the story of the lovers, one is left with the impression that the artist has sought an excuse to play out the animals one more time and has found in the tale of Layla and Majnun a convenient framework for a masterful composition (Molly Emma Aitken, The Intelligence of Tradition in Rajput Court Painting, New York, 2010, p.170).

In this painting, Layla is depicted as a grand figure, heavily contrasted with the emaciated Majnun. She is haloed and wears an elegant animal headed knee guard as well as a wonderfully opulent robe, the folds of which fall beautifully. She appears to be heavily influenced by a European print, a conflation perhaps between the Virgin Mary and armoured figure. As discussed before lot 14 of this catalogue, there was an emergent trend in the Mughal courts from the early days of Akbar’s reign to emulate European artistic modes, which bought with it a host of subjects, many religious. European prints by Flemish masters working ultimately under the influence of Albrecht Dürer were accessible to the painters of Akbar’s studio (see for instance, a Mughal miniature of the Virgin and Child, done circa 1600 after an engraving by Dürer which is in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, reproduced in Amina Okada, Imperial Mughal Painters (Indian Miniatures from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries), Paris, 1992, p.24, no.24). Dutch, French and Italian prints were also available, as were large scale oil paintings. Two such oil paintings are seen in a painting by Abu’l-Hasan depicting ceremonies at the accession of Jahangir from a Jahangirnama manuscript which is in the St. Petersburg Muraqqa’ (f.22r, Francesca V. Habsburg et al, The St. Petersburg Muraqqa, Lugano, 1996, pl.177). Almost contemporaneous with our miniature, the depiction of this oil painting shows the influences to which our artist must have been exposed.

In another of the drawings of this subject, by Manohar Das (now in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin,11A.12), the artist seems again to have based the figure of Layla on a female figure from a European print (Aitken, op.cit. fig.4.16, p.170). Manohar, like so many of the other Imperial artists of the period, took great interest in the aesthetic and technical possibilities of European art.

The calligraphy here is signed Mir 'Ali. According to Dost Muhammad in his preface to the Bahram Mirza album, Mir 'Ali Haravi (circa 1530-40), 'the rarity of the age' showed such mastery of nasta'liq that his inimitable work 'cannot be described by the pen's tongue or by the two-tongued pen' (W.M. Thackston, A Century of Princes: Sources on Timurid History and Art, Cambridge, 1989, p. 343). A student of Zayn al-Din Mahmud and Sultan 'Ali Mashhadi, the work of Mir 'Ali was widely-respected not just by his patrons, amongst whom were the Safavid prince and calligrapher Sam Mirza, and the Uzbek ruler 'Ubaydullah Khan, but also by subsequent generations. For example, the Mughal emperor Jahangir describes in his memoirs how he received a copy of Jami's Yusuf wa Zulaykha in Mir 'Ali's hand worth a thousand gold mohurs, and his grandson learned to write nasta'liq by imitating pages by Mir 'Ali (Annemarie Schimmel, 'The Calligraphy and Poetry of the Kevorkian Album', in S.C. Welch et al. (eds.) The Emperor's Album: Images of Mughal India, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987, pp. 34). His son, Shah Jahan was also clearly an admirer of his work and many of the calligraphic folios incorporated into the Shah Jahan album are by this calligrapher. One such folio from the Shah Jahan Album, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has a calligraphy on the verso by Mir ‘Ali Haravi in which the text also comprises a riddle by the calligrapher (55.121.10.3).