Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c21.16

c21.16

The effect of the intercourse with the West, which by the seventeenth century was assuming considerable proportions, may be gathered by examining some of the details of the miniature in the frontispiece. Apart from the two English portraits shown in the background and already referred to, the throne on which the emperor is seated was largely the handiwork of a European. It was a present from I‘timad-ud-daula, the father of Jahangir’s famous consort Nur-Jahan, and he is shown in a prominent place in the picture. The throne was described by the emperor himself in 1619 as ‘of gold and silver, much ornamented and decorated, the supports of which were in the form of tigers. It had been completed with great assiduity in the space of three years, and was made at the cost of R. 450,000. This throne had been made by a skilful European of the name of Hunarmand (skilful), who had no rival in the arts of a goldsmith and a jeweller, and in all sorts of skill (*hunarmandī*). He had made it very well, and I gave him this name.’ As a reward he was ‘presented with 3,000 *darb*, a horse and an elephant’. The question has arisen as to whether the craftsman, to whom Jahangir gave such an appropriate title, was Austin of Bordeaux, the illusive and adventurous jeweller who has been the subject of so much discussion in connexion with the design and construction of the Taj Mahal at Agra. Originally bearing the name of Augustinus Hiriart, and afterwards calling himself Hiriand of Bordeaux, it seems not unlikely that Jahangir, seeing no meaning in the word Hiriand, as a pleasantry transformed it into Hunarmand, which is the Persian for ‘skilful’. A glance at the picture will show that the throne is of unusual construction, and one of its principal accessories, the overhead canopy decorated with gold embroidery on velvet, is by its design presumably of Italian manufacture. The pattern on the cushion against which the emperor is leaning is also not Indian in character.