Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c19.3.3

c19.3.3

It seems not unlikely that Jahangir’s freedom in the treatment of the school, his apparent laxity in many ways, may have led to a less restrained and broader development of the art. The painters he specially mentions are Bishandās, Farrukh Beg, Abu’l-Ḥasan, and Mansur, while two others who also executed good pictures which are known to us were Manohar and Govardhan. Additional names may be identified with the art of his time, but this brief list comprises the principal group at the court. These artists were mainly occupied in painting pictures of everyday events which were to form the illustrations to Jahangir’s memoirs. A number of copies of this autobiography were produced—we read of several being presented to different people—and no doubt most of them contained pictures. But there was one standard original, the illustrations of which were designed and executed by the leading artists, and this was kept in the imperial library of the Mughals. The pictures were not bound up with the text, but formed a separate folio or *muraqqa‘*, and from these originals duplicates were made by less accomplished artists as they were required. The emperor’s own copy has been partly destroyed and any pictures that survived have been dispersed, but sufficient are available, supplemented by copies, to reconstruct, pictorially, much of the life of this emperor and the events of his reign.