Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c13.30

c13.30

country may be imagined. It is true that in the pictures of Bihzad little change is apparent. He was an elderly man when it came; and besides he was too great a master to be diverted by events even of this magnitude. But on the art of some of his followers it had considerable influence. In this way there came into being the Safavid school of painting, which, actively encouraged by Shah Tahmasp, the second ruler of the dynasty, produced at Tabriz, Herat, and Shiraz a large amount of illustrative work. Its character may be judged by referring to Plate III, Fig. 1, which is a typical example of the Safavid style of painting in the middle of the sixteenth century. There is no mistaking the figure-drawing of this period, even if one has not the distinctive head-dress as a guide. The court scenes are rich and varied in colour and composition, but it is in the single-figure subjects, as in Plate III, Fig. 2, that the artists show the true nature of the Sufi. Young men reclining under sprays of almond blossom, swains composing poems to their loves in gardens of flowers, musicians dreamily playing on lutes by the side of purling streams, drinking scenes, feasting scenes, and all that one associates with a life of sensuousness and self-indulgence are depicted in the art of this period. Exquisite though they may be, the Safavid pictures, especially under Shah Abbas towards the end of the sixteenth century, display a sense of over-richness which was a premonition of the decline of the school. And the decline came, followed, as is its wont, by an attempt at a renaissance. In the first half of the seventeenth century an artist of the name of Ali Riza Abbasi of Tabriz endeavoured to bring about a revival of the earlier and purer style of work, and produced numerous pictures and sketches displaying considerable merit, which have been much sought after by connoisseurs. But Riza died at some time before 1645, and with him died the Persian school of painting, for the pictures executed in the country since that date have few qualities to commend them. Western influence, acting on every aspect of Persian life, was partly responsible for this decay; but the art of the country had already fallen from its high estate. European contact merely hastened the end.