Art & Deal – Correspomdent
K. Bikram Singh
The reign of Jahangir and Shah Jahan are known for a number
of innovations in the arts. For instance, female portraiture was
unheard of, before Jahangir assigned court painters the task of
painting his queen, Noor Jehan. Painters began detailing facial
features intricately and the art of portraiture moved away from
the stereotypical principles followed earlier. Broad and heavily
embellished borders with golden in-fills framed illustrations and
calligraphy began to be understood as an extension of the visual
vibrancy of the painting. In the Islamic tradition, the art and skill
of writing is highly valued, especially the art of calligraphy since
it was a way to document the verses of the Qur’an; the word of
God, in the most beautiful manner possible. Hence, calligraphy
forms a part of architecture as surface embellishment in a variety
of styles- the Naskh script seen in the gateway façade of the
Buland Darwaza and the Thuluth script on the Taj Mahal’s main
Pishtaq (central doorway) engraved with jasper. The importance
of the written word and the act of reading or gaining knowledge,
in the Islamic tradition, can be inferred from the fact that during
the Qur’anic revelations, the first word of the first Surah to be
revealed was ‘Iqra’, meaning ‘read’.
In paintings made during Jahangir’s reign, text was not
confined to rectangular frames, like in Akbar’s ateliers but
was placed inside borders with curvilinear, almost cloud-like
silhouettes. The image was thus, largely uninterrupted and the
written word blended in the composition itself. The text and
visuals complemented each other.
As important as these historical aesthetic developments
were, the strongest visual impact emerged from the trend of
commissioning dynastic portraits where every person in the
Mughal ancestry, religious scholars and other illustrious men
was painted. These portraits were largely a work of the painter’s
imagination and later morphed into highly symbolic paintings
that were meant to glorify the emperor, legitimize his rule and
create pride in his line of ancestors. Jahangir’s court produced a
number of paintings depicting Akbar handing over the rule of
the empire to him, only to be falsified by paintings produced in
Shah Jahan’s court, under master painter Muhammad Faqirullah
Khan, where Western influence and further refinement created a
very strong culture of allegorical paintings.
