Page from the Salim Album: Nobleman Saying His Rosary Beneath a Tree (Primary Title)
Prince Seated Under Tree Saying His Rosary (Former Title)
Unknown (Artist)
Unlike his father, Akbar, who frequently patronized the production of grand manuscripts with hundreds of illustrations, the Mughal emperor Jahangir preferred to commission and collect individual pictures. He had these paintings placed in elaborate albums together with examples of calligraphy and even European prints. This picture comes from one of his earliest albums, an intimately scaled work dominated by single-figure portraits assembled before he succeeded his father and took the title Jahangir (World Conqueror). The collection is, therefore, called the Salim Album, after his given name. The inscription above this painting identifies its artist as Jagannath. Its subject is an unidentified and perhaps idealized nobleman seated beneath a tree with prayer beads in his right hand. Jagannath here owes much to western pictorial ideas: the composition was almost certainly derived from a European source; multiple planes are used to create sense of spatial recession; and the skillful use of lines, washes, and subtle shading recalls European oil painting.
Akbar/Jahangir period
Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, Gift of Paul Mellon
Image released via Creative Commons CC-BY-NC
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