Cleveland Museum of Art

A prince riding a composite elephant

Date

c. 1590

Medium

Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper

Culture

India, Golconda, Deccan, 16th century

Department

Indian and Southeast Asian Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

A prince sits cross-legged in a covered howdah seat secured to the back of a royal elephant with golden rings on its tusks. The elephant is being driven by attendants, one of whom holds a goad. Artists in the southern Indian region known as the Deccan expanded upon Persian practices of embedding creatures in landscape scenes—like a visual double-entendre—and created inventive images of composite creatures made up of figures that invite extended close looking. This painting would have been mounted in an album that was brought out for entertainment in elite intimate gatherings. Two lions share one head at the top of the elephant’s head.

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