Cleveland Museum of Art

Mary ascends the stairs to the temple, from a Mirror of Holiness (Mir’at al-quds) of Father Jerome Xavier

Date: 1602–4
Medium: Gum tempera, ink, color, and gold on paper
Culture: Mughal India, Allahabad, made for Prince Salim (1569–1627)
Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art

Three-year-old Mary bounds up the stairs of the temple, eager to begin her education. Onlookers gesture in surprise. In the background the rocks have been cleverly shaded to look like faces—a Persian technique of visual double-entendre that the Mughals admired and adopted. This work is the second of the 27 surviving paintings made for this manuscript. The first, a scene of Mary’s birth, is in a private collection in Europe. Mary’s face had been painted with a fragile white paint, which has fallen off. Now only the underdrawing remains visible. Mary’s instructor awaits her, book in hand, at the top of a temple of learning.

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