Page from the Late Shah Jahan Album: Ram Singh of Amber (Primary Title)
Unknown (Artist)
India’s Mughal emperors and their Safavid counterparts in Iran cultivated a tradition of assembling sumptuous albums (muraqqa) filled with prized paintings and works of calligraphy. This folio is from the last great Mughal album, produced in the final decade of Emperor Shah Jahan’s reign. Featuring a portrait of a courtier on one side and a panel of calligraphies on the other, the pages, when bound, would have alternated between openings of paired pictures and calligraphies. Framed in elegantly painted floral borders, this panel of unsigned, intricately decorated calligraphy is an excerpt from the 13th-century Persian Gulistan (Rose Garden). Like most examples in the Late Shah Jahan Album, it likely dates to the 16th-century, when Persian calligraphy was at its zenith.
Shah Jahan Period
Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, Gift of Paul Mellon
Image released via Creative Commons CC-BY-NC
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