Posthumous portrait of the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah (reigned 1719–1748) holding a falcon (recto)

1764

Muhammad Rizavi Hindi

(Indian, active mid-1700s)

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Culture

Mughal India, probably Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow

Medium

Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper

Measurements

Painting only: 14.4 x 10.3 cm (5 11/16 x 4 1/16 in.); Page: 28 x 23.8 cm (11 x 9 3/8 in.)

Credit Line

Gift in honor of Madeline Neves Clapp; Gift of Mrs. Henry White Cannon by exchange; Bequest of Louise T. Cooper; Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund; From the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection 2013.347.a

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Location

Not on view

Did You Know?

The archer’s thumb ring is for drawing the bowstring. Perhaps he was left-handed.

Description

The artist used the carpet, the floor cushion, and the halo to indicate the royal status of the seated figure. He has turned the picture plane into the space of a window, over the sill of which a golden carpet ornamented with a field of lilies marks his location for outsiders. His signature in Persian, the Mughal lingua franca, interrupts the fringed border.

Painted after the emperor’s death and the dissolution of much of the Mughal court, this refined portrait pays tribute to the wealth and power of the imperial past.