Cleveland Museum of Art

Princess and attendant in trompe l’oeil window

Date

c. 1765

Medium

Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper

Culture

Mughal India, Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow

Department

Indian and Southeast Asian Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

A golden window shade has been rolled up to reveal a princess seated on a terrace. The carpet draped over the sill echoes that of the balcony rail where royals would show themselves to the public. Rather than taking the view of an outsider, the viewer looks from inside the palace out to the women and the wooded landscape beyond. During the mid-1600s, the Mughal court introduced a preference for the patterns on carpets and textiles: flowering plants on a plain ground. This influential fashion derived from their appreciation of European botanical studies that merchants and diplomats brought to India. Unlike in portraits of the emperor, women sit on the outside of the royal window.

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