Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c13.11.2

c13.11.2

To this artistic people, therefore, the Mongols soon began to look for aesthetic inspiration, employing Chinese painters and craftsmen, even carrying them away in the course of their triumphant progress, to distant capitals to decorate their palaces and adorn their halls. In this manner was brought about that similarity which is noticeable in the arts of the east and west of Asia during the Mongolian era. For the time being the greater part of the continent was under the rule of one house, and interchange of thought over wide areas became an easy matter. While Persia was imbibing the art of the Far East as practised under the Sung dynasty, so Chinese artists were probably drawing something from the west. We see this in the thirteenth-century painting of Ch'ien Hsuan, and also in the early porcelain of China which was decorated sometimes with panels of a Kufic script. But the fusion of the arts of Asia under the Mongol flux had another result. Persia had previously looked mainly westward for inspiration, drawing it indirectly from European sources; but from now onward for several centuries it turned its back deliberately on the Occident, and looked steadfastly towards the rising sun. From this time the schools of China were its classics, and to these it owes much of the spirit of its art. From China were brought many cunning workmen skilled in all industries, decorators in glaze, embroiderers and painters.