<p>Mughal rulers were avid collectors of objects and curios from foreign lands. From Chinese porcelains to Colombian emeralds, the ownership of luxury goods and rare objects was a marker of status, wealth and cosmopolitanism. In the early 17th century, the Mughal emperor Jahangir collected European paintings and prints, curious about what these objects represented. Father Jerome Xavier, a Jesuit priest who spent time in Jahangir’s court in Lahore, wrote that the ruler had ordered his librarian to fetch albums of European engravings so that the Jesuits could expound on their iconography and allegorical meanings. Xavier even recorded instances of artists in Jahangir’s painting workshops copying some of these works.</p>.<p>The interaction between Jesuit priests and the Mughal rulers dates back to the reign of Jahangir’s father, Akbar, a tolerant man with an interest in religions, art, and literature (despite being unlettered himself), who had sent a Mughal embassy to the Portuguese colony of Goa in southern India in 1579. In response, the first Jesuit mission of three clergymen arrived at the Mughal court in 1580 and remained there until 1583.</p>.<p>This fateful encounter, between the Islamicate court and the Jesuits, would lead to multiple instances of Mughal artists explicitly engaging with Christian subject matter. Two popular themes in medieval and early modern Byzantine, Renaissance and Flemish art — Christ’s Ascension into Heaven, and the Virgin and Child — quickly became a part of their artistic repertoire. The Virgin Mary is an important figure in Islam; she is, in fact, mentioned in the Quran. Mughal painting ateliers produced multiple images of the Virgin and Child, either borrowing directly from European engravings or creating paintings that reinterpreted and reimagined the subject.</p>.<p>Apart from copying the subject matter, Mughal ateliers also adopted European iconography such as putti (angelic beings portrayed as male children), cherubs, and halos, adapting them to paintings which depicted secular subjects such as portraits of their rulers. In these Mughal paintings, cherubs bearing paper scrolls, and flying angels playing musical instruments and bearing crowns symbolised the omnipresence of God and His benediction over the Mughal emperor. Along with these symbols and themes, artists also employed European painterly conventions, particularly the use of chiaroscuro — the interplay of light and shade, and linear perspective.</p>.<p>Mughal painters who worked from illustrated Bibles, prints and images did not always copy the engravings but rather imbued them with their own stylistic conventions and adapted them to suit contemporary cultural and religious contexts. The creation and circulation of images on Christian subjects and the use of iconography with Biblical connotations in South Asia at the time perhaps had more to do with a fascination with a new visual language and its cosmopolitanism, rather than a belief in the religious faith. While the Jesuit missionaries may have hoped to evangelise the Mughal elite, their presence is perhaps most visible today through the Christian imagery that proliferated the paintings made in Mughal ateliers.</p>.<p><em>Discover Indian Art is a monthly column that delves into fascinating stories on art from across the sub-continent, curated by the editors of the MAP Academy. Find them on Instagram as @map_academy</em></p>
<p>Mughal rulers were avid collectors of objects and curios from foreign lands. From Chinese porcelains to Colombian emeralds, the ownership of luxury goods and rare objects was a marker of status, wealth and cosmopolitanism. In the early 17th century, the Mughal emperor Jahangir collected European paintings and prints, curious about what these objects represented. Father Jerome Xavier, a Jesuit priest who spent time in Jahangir’s court in Lahore, wrote that the ruler had ordered his librarian to fetch albums of European engravings so that the Jesuits could expound on their iconography and allegorical meanings. Xavier even recorded instances of artists in Jahangir’s painting workshops copying some of these works.</p>.<p>The interaction between Jesuit priests and the Mughal rulers dates back to the reign of Jahangir’s father, Akbar, a tolerant man with an interest in religions, art, and literature (despite being unlettered himself), who had sent a Mughal embassy to the Portuguese colony of Goa in southern India in 1579. In response, the first Jesuit mission of three clergymen arrived at the Mughal court in 1580 and remained there until 1583.</p>.<p>This fateful encounter, between the Islamicate court and the Jesuits, would lead to multiple instances of Mughal artists explicitly engaging with Christian subject matter. Two popular themes in medieval and early modern Byzantine, Renaissance and Flemish art — Christ’s Ascension into Heaven, and the Virgin and Child — quickly became a part of their artistic repertoire. The Virgin Mary is an important figure in Islam; she is, in fact, mentioned in the Quran. Mughal painting ateliers produced multiple images of the Virgin and Child, either borrowing directly from European engravings or creating paintings that reinterpreted and reimagined the subject.</p>.<p>Apart from copying the subject matter, Mughal ateliers also adopted European iconography such as putti (angelic beings portrayed as male children), cherubs, and halos, adapting them to paintings which depicted secular subjects such as portraits of their rulers. In these Mughal paintings, cherubs bearing paper scrolls, and flying angels playing musical instruments and bearing crowns symbolised the omnipresence of God and His benediction over the Mughal emperor. Along with these symbols and themes, artists also employed European painterly conventions, particularly the use of chiaroscuro — the interplay of light and shade, and linear perspective.</p>.<p>Mughal painters who worked from illustrated Bibles, prints and images did not always copy the engravings but rather imbued them with their own stylistic conventions and adapted them to suit contemporary cultural and religious contexts. The creation and circulation of images on Christian subjects and the use of iconography with Biblical connotations in South Asia at the time perhaps had more to do with a fascination with a new visual language and its cosmopolitanism, rather than a belief in the religious faith. While the Jesuit missionaries may have hoped to evangelise the Mughal elite, their presence is perhaps most visible today through the Christian imagery that proliferated the paintings made in Mughal ateliers.</p>.<p><em>Discover Indian Art is a monthly column that delves into fascinating stories on art from across the sub-continent, curated by the editors of the MAP Academy. Find them on Instagram as @map_academy</em></p>