Cleveland Museum of Art

Posthumous portrait of the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah (reigned 1719–1748) holding a falcon (recto)

Muhammad Rizavi Hindi

Date

1764

Medium

Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper

Culture

Mughal India, probably Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow

Department

Indian and Southeast Asian Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

The artist used the carpet, the floor cushion, and the halo to indicate the royal status of the seated figure. He has turned the picture plane into the space of a window, over the sill of which a golden carpet ornamented with a field of lilies marks his location for outsiders. His signature in Persian, the Mughal lingua franca, interrupts the fringed border. Painted after the emperor’s death and the dissolution of much of the Mughal court, this refined portrait pays tribute to the wealth and power of the imperial past. The archer’s thumb ring is for drawing the bowstring. Perhaps he was left-handed.

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