Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c15.20.3

c15.20.3

By chance it fell into the hands of Khan ‘Alam of Isfahan.’ This man was either a collector or a dealer, and it seems that Shah ‘Abbas, the reigning emperor of Persia, and himself an enthusiastic connoisseur, ‘heard that he had found such a rare prize, and asked it of him on the pretence of looking at it. Khan ‘Alam tried to evade this by artful stratagems, but when he repeatedly insisted on it, he sent it to him. The Shah recognized it immediately he saw it. He kept it by him for a day, but at last, as he knew how great was our (Jahangir’s) liking for such rarities, he—God be praised—... told the facts of the case (about its being stolen) to Khan ‘Alam’—which was all the dealer got for his pains—and made the picture over to the Mughal emperor’s representative, who was at the Persian capital and happened to be negotiating for its purchase at that particular time. When this ‘old master’, after its adventures, was finally presented to Jahangir, he soliloquizes over it with the intimate knowledge of an expert. ‘The work was very complete and grand, and resembled greatly the paint-brush of Ustad Bihzad. If the name of the painter had not been written, the work would have been believed to be his.