A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c20.s1.78

c20.s1.78

This improvement, if it may be so called, may have been the result of European influence, which certainly became a potent factor in Persian and Indian art at that time. Most of the albums show it plainly. For instance, Dārā Shukoh’s album includes two wood engravings (fol. 42 *b*, 43), one of S. Caterina di Siena, dated 1585, and the other of S. Margarita of about the same period, while the picture on folio 74 exhibits a lady and gentleman in European costume. Biblical subjects were frequently treated by the artists, and were specially favoured by the royal family, who used them for palace decorations at both Fathpur-Sīkrī and Lahore. The treatment at times seems very quaint, as when we see the Good Shepherd depicted in the form of a stout middle-aged man with a black beard, wearing a Muslim's robe and a twisted turban of gold brocade (Plate CXV). A second Good Shepherd in vol. xvi, fol. 1 of the Johnson Collection is signed by Ustād Miskīn, probably to be identified with Muhammad Miskīn, the author of a lady's portrait in vol. xxi, fol. 1 of the same collection, and with Miskīn, Akbar's artist, who signed some of the pictures in the Clarke MS. of the *Akbarnāmah*. Many other biblical subjects will be found in the collections, and it must be confessed that the pictures are not usually equal to those devoted to topics more congenial to the artists.