MUGHAL INDIA, 16TH CENTURY

INSCRIPTIONS:
The word 'Peri' is written in black nasta'liq beside the figure

The scene depicted in this painting, of a peri picking fruits from a flowering tree, has many stylistic similarities with the important cloth paintings which comprise the earliest surviving examples of Mughal art. The large scale of our figure as well as the colour palette bears close resemblance to the paintings of Akbar’s Hamzanama, which was commissioned for the emperor around the year 1560, and which is now widely scattered between private and institutional collections. The treatment of the natural world – from the silver swirling patterns in the water, to the yellow-tipped leaves on the tree – also bears a close resemblance with surviving Hamzanama paintings. The brief identifying inscription to the right of the figure is reminiscent of this highly significant manuscript, in which many figures are similarly picked out for the reader. If this fragment were taken from a folio of the Hamzanama, it may come from the same scene as a fragment in the Metropolitan Museum of Art which also depicts part of a riverine scene below an orange sky, and is of similar dimensions to the present lot (Rogers Fund, 1918, Acc.no.18.76.2)

The modelling of the peri, however, fits less easily within the style of the Hamzanama. The peris in the manuscript appear more insubstantial than the full-bodied figure depicted here (see John Seyller, The Adventures of Hamza: Painting and Storytelling in Mughal India, Washington D.C., 2002, p.85, cat.20). The face, painted in profile with a look of cool focus in her eye, also differs from the expressive, at times comical, expressions of the diverse cast of characters in the Hamzanama. The attenuated shape of the large eyes and precisely-drawn features in fact are more at home with earlier manuscripts, such as Akbar’s Tutinama or early interpretations of the Bhagavata Purana. It is not difficult to see why this fragment – with the certainty that it represents a very early group of Mughal paintings, and the possibility that it comes from one of the most important manuscripts to be patronised by the dynasty - caught the eye and the imagination of a connoisseur like Toby Falk.