Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c16.9

c16.9

Remarkable in its design, and extraordinarily rich in its construction though the throne of the ‘Great Moguls’ was, especially when seen *in situ*, with the gorgeously ornamented pillared hall as its background, it was excelled in every way by Shah Jahan’s greatest architectural triumph, the Taj Mahal at Agra. This magnificent conception, which enshrines the remains of his queen, Arjuman Begum, is one of the noblest memorials ever erected to any human being, and denotes the high-water mark of art under the Mughals. It is fitting that this emperor’s reign, sumptuous in its pageantry, and prodigal in its display of wealth, should be crowned by such a masterpiece of the builders’ art, so admirable in sentiment, so perfect in composition. While its architectural proportions, and the chaste material with which it is constructed, are its main charm, in the beauty of some of the decorative details, particularly the coloured lapidary, it has probably never been equalled. And in these delicate patterns of precious stones there is much that is reminiscent of the contemporary art of the painter, for the same *motifs* may be seen in the designs on the inlaid alabaster as on the flowered borders of the miniatures. The illuminated mount framing the picture on Plate LIII is very similar to much of the *pietra dura* in the Taj and other buildings of the period: in technique only do the two crafts differ, in the one the effects were obtained by coloured stones, in the other by pigments and burnished gold. During this reign no miniature was considered complete unless it was surrounded by one of these highly ornamented borders, in which bright-hued flowers, butterflies, and birds were freely introduced. Nor did such a desire for display, which was the key-note of the time, end thus, but it became customary for these spacious mounts to be still further enriched by the addition of a number of human figures, seated or standing, amid floral scrolls or arabesques. This form of embellishment, while appearing first in Jahangir’s reign, became a distinctive feature of the art under Shah Jahan, as the majority of the pictures belonging to his period plainly demonstrate. An appreciable number of these works of art with borders of a corresponding character, and bearing considerable similarity in general appearance, design, and treatment, seems to have formed part of a large and ambitious volume of miniatures prepared under the latter emperor’s orders. Although its pages are now scattered among various collections, it is possible to reconstruct a considerable portion of this album and so obtain a very fair idea of the painting and the school at the time when the Taj Mahal was being constructed, and the Mughal dynasty was at its zenith.