Posted on: 16 October 2012

Akbar with a Sarpech, from the Late Shahjahan Album
ca. 1650

Mughal dynasty
Shah Jahan (r. 1628–55)

Opaque watercolor, ink, and gold on paper mounted on paperboard
H: 24.2 W: 15.6 cm
India

This posthumous portrait of the third Mughal emperor, Akbar (reigned 1556-1605), was commissioned by his grandson Shahjahan (reigned 1628-58). Its realistic details reflect the continuing impact of the European pictorial tradition on imperial Mughal painting during Shahjahan's reign. Although this is a formal state portrait intended to glorify Akbar, the sensitive rendition of the subject's mood and age clearly demonstrates the artist's interest in character exploration.
A man of great energy, Akbar, like his father, Humayun, employed numbers or artists and architects to create for his court great buildings and fine libraries of illustrated books, status symbols in the Islamic world. Here, Akbar holds a jeweled turban ornament called a "sarpech," an emblem of royal power; similar to the one displayed to the right.

Copyright © 2012 Smithsonian Institution


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Rare Book Society of India: Your description is abs right. The christian influence is visible in the two flying nymphs or imps in the top border of the painting whereas it being posthumous is evident by Akbar's churidar which is striped and the transparent Jama on top. In Painings commissioned by Akbar himself, I have never come across this combination of striped churidar and transparent jama, which started from Jahangir's time, in whose reign (1605/27) the art of miniature paintings reached its zenith.

As rightly pointed out by Mr. Trivedi, Mughal painting of this era began to draw on Christian themes and subject matter. Both Basawan and Manohar, master painters of their style and period, painted depictions of scenes from Christian scripture. See for example, this stunning painting,titled Madonna and Child, attributed sometimes to Basawan, sometimes to Manohar; currently in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/60050372