An Akbar-Namah ManuscriptAuthor(s): E. F. WelleszSource: The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 80, No. 471 (Jun., 1942), pp. 135-143Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/868602Accessed: 02/03/2010 04:52

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On Art and Connoisseurship On Art and Connoisseurship

applies his pragmatic intelligence to the problems of connoisseurship-problems which may be historical (the objective criteria of authorship, for example) or practical (the analytical examination of pictures, the use of photographs, etc.) or technical (the detection of copies, forgeries, and restorations). Dr. Fried- lander withholds nothing: he pours out his secrets for the future use of students and the guidance of amateurs; and there is no professional worker in the field of art, be he museum director, expert, dealer or restorer, who will not read these pages with great benefit. Particularly rich in observation and pertinent example is a chapter on "Artistic Quality: Original and Copy," and a quotation from it will show how concretely Dr. Friedlander will illustrate a point under discussion:

" I will try to illustrate by means of an example the kind of mistake a copyist is liable to make. Before me there lie two drawings, one the archetype, the other a close imitation. In the foreground, out of the earth, there rises a stone across whose base there extends a wavy mass of sand. The copyist has erroneously taken the slight, undulating line for the lower edge of the stone, which now in the copy is not contained in the soil but, on the contrary, stands on the ground with an impossible jagged contour. The ensemble of forms seems in each case to be almost exactly the same, yet the total effect is completely different, since the copy has wiped out the special illusion caused by the position of the stone behind the wavy mass of sand."

The first and the final test of a book as of a picture lies in the " facture," and it is perhaps not necessary to praise a style which is already so famous, and which preserves all its animation in this translation. Dr. Friedlander does not write a typical German style : he is elliptic, aphoristic, witty and objective. It is the style of a Good European, of a man who, in this field of art, has modelled himself on Goethe, Stendhal, Merimee and Baudelaire rather than on the academicians. I will conclude by quoting a few of the hundreds of brilliant aphorisms which are merely

applies his pragmatic intelligence to the problems of connoisseurship-problems which may be historical (the objective criteria of authorship, for example) or practical (the analytical examination of pictures, the use of photographs, etc.) or technical (the detection of copies, forgeries, and restorations). Dr. Fried- lander withholds nothing: he pours out his secrets for the future use of students and the guidance of amateurs; and there is no professional worker in the field of art, be he museum director, expert, dealer or restorer, who will not read these pages with great benefit. Particularly rich in observation and pertinent example is a chapter on "Artistic Quality: Original and Copy," and a quotation from it will show how concretely Dr. Friedlander will illustrate a point under discussion:

" I will try to illustrate by means of an example the kind of mistake a copyist is liable to make. Before me there lie two drawings, one the archetype, the other a close imitation. In the foreground, out of the earth, there rises a stone across whose base there extends a wavy mass of sand. The copyist has erroneously taken the slight, undulating line for the lower edge of the stone, which now in the copy is not contained in the soil but, on the contrary, stands on the ground with an impossible jagged contour. The ensemble of forms seems in each case to be almost exactly the same, yet the total effect is completely different, since the copy has wiped out the special illusion caused by the position of the stone behind the wavy mass of sand."

The first and the final test of a book as of a picture lies in the " facture," and it is perhaps not necessary to praise a style which is already so famous, and which preserves all its animation in this translation. Dr. Friedlander does not write a typical German style : he is elliptic, aphoristic, witty and objective. It is the style of a Good European, of a man who, in this field of art, has modelled himself on Goethe, Stendhal, Merimee and Baudelaire rather than on the academicians. I will conclude by quoting a few of the hundreds of brilliant aphorisms which are merely

the high lights on a consistently luminous canvas :- Van Eyck's eye moved in front of a world at rest;

Manet's eye rested in front of a world in motion. To emphasize one's personal style means to make

a virtue of necessity. The artist never loses the feeling of standing before

an insoluble task... If he imagines that he has reached his goal, he has really come to the end and stands at that boundary where mannerism begins.

The concept of beauty suffers from an ominous generalness and painful vacuity.

The indifference with which the painters in the I9th century allowed their pictures to be framed produces a sense of distrustfulness.

The real theme of genre painting is condition, not event.

Woe to the master who looks at the human face with the eye of the still-life painter.

Works of art do not speak-they sing. In front of art the thinkers are mostly blind and the

practising artists mostly dumb. It is in the nature of a work of art to speak am-

biguously, like an oracle. Intuitive judgment may be regarded as a necessary

evil. The works belonging to the old age of the greatest

masters all share a sublime and transfigured time- lessness.

Genius changes from inner necessity, talent for a reason.

There do not exist many authors whose literary capacity is on a level with their understanding of art.

These are enough to prove the self-application of a remark with which Dr. Friedlander brings his book to an end: "Descriptions or statements, elaborate and aiming at completeness, demand too much of the visual memory of the reader : it is the aphorisms, throwing light like flashes, which are above all effective." But it should be added that Dr. Friedlander has further aided the reader's visual memory by the choice of forty illustrations, excellently reproduced in half-tone.

the high lights on a consistently luminous canvas :- Van Eyck's eye moved in front of a world at rest;

Manet's eye rested in front of a world in motion. To emphasize one's personal style means to make

a virtue of necessity. The artist never loses the feeling of standing before

an insoluble task... If he imagines that he has reached his goal, he has really come to the end and stands at that boundary where mannerism begins.

The concept of beauty suffers from an ominous generalness and painful vacuity.

The indifference with which the painters in the I9th century allowed their pictures to be framed produces a sense of distrustfulness.

The real theme of genre painting is condition, not event.

Woe to the master who looks at the human face with the eye of the still-life painter.

Works of art do not speak-they sing. In front of art the thinkers are mostly blind and the

practising artists mostly dumb. It is in the nature of a work of art to speak am-

biguously, like an oracle. Intuitive judgment may be regarded as a necessary

evil. The works belonging to the old age of the greatest

masters all share a sublime and transfigured time- lessness.

Genius changes from inner necessity, talent for a reason.

There do not exist many authors whose literary capacity is on a level with their understanding of art.

These are enough to prove the self-application of a remark with which Dr. Friedlander brings his book to an end: "Descriptions or statements, elaborate and aiming at completeness, demand too much of the visual memory of the reader : it is the aphorisms, throwing light like flashes, which are above all effective." But it should be added that Dr. Friedlander has further aided the reader's visual memory by the choice of forty illustrations, excellently reproduced in half-tone.

AN AKBAR-NAMAH MANUSCRIPT BY E. F. WELLESZ AN AKBAR-NAMAH MANUSCRIPT BY E. F. WELLESZ

hMONG the items in the Indian Section \of the Victoria and Albert Museum

which, very justly, have been most admired, range the illustrations of an Akbar-namah, the biography of the

greatest among the emperors of India, written by Abul Fazl, his first minister and favourite.1

This manuscript, which belongs to the most outstanding of its time, has already received much consideration in the literature dealing with the art of this period ; but the subject is interesting enough

1 The Akbar-namah, transl. by H. BEVERIDGE, Calcutta.

hMONG the items in the Indian Section \of the Victoria and Albert Museum

which, very justly, have been most admired, range the illustrations of an Akbar-namah, the biography of the

greatest among the emperors of India, written by Abul Fazl, his first minister and favourite.1

This manuscript, which belongs to the most outstanding of its time, has already received much consideration in the literature dealing with the art of this period ; but the subject is interesting enough

1 The Akbar-namah, transl. by H. BEVERIDGE, Calcutta.

to justify a new attempt at throwing some further light on the problems it offers.

The codex is not dated, but it bears a note saying, that Jahangir, Akbar's son and successor to the throne of India, placed this volume in the Imperial Library in the year i605, the date of Akbar's death, and it shows Jahangir's authentic handwriting and seal. This allows us two conjectures: one, that the book, having been formerly in Akbar's possession, had passed to his son and heir; the other, which has been suggested by Mr. Percy Brown,2 that it had formed part of Jahangir's

to justify a new attempt at throwing some further light on the problems it offers.

The codex is not dated, but it bears a note saying, that Jahangir, Akbar's son and successor to the throne of India, placed this volume in the Imperial Library in the year i605, the date of Akbar's death, and it shows Jahangir's authentic handwriting and seal. This allows us two conjectures: one, that the book, having been formerly in Akbar's possession, had passed to his son and heir; the other, which has been suggested by Mr. Percy Brown,2 that it had formed part of Jahangir's

I35 I35

An Akbar-namah Manuscript

library, whilst this prince was heir apparent, and had been found worthy of being added to the gems of the Imperial Library after Jahangir's succession to the throne.

Mr. Percy Brown is led to this conjecture chiefly through aesthetic considerations; he thinks the miniatures inferior to those of other authentic Akbar- manuscripts and believes them to be copies made for the heir apparent from an Arkbar-namah belong- ing to the emperor. Other writers3 object to this view and declare the South Kensington Akbar- namah to be on the same artistic level as the other manuscripts executed for the emperor, a view, which is definitely the one on which this article is based.

Most of the pictures contain inscriptions, indicating by which artists they have been made. These inscriptions quite obviously are not the authentic signatures of the artists themselves, but we may assume, that they are contemporary and written by some clerk who had to control the amount of work done by every individual artist in order to let him have the exact sum of money due to him.4 Most of these inscriptions show the names of two, sometimes even of three collaborators, one for the outline, one for the painting, and, in a few cases, a third for the portraits. This is not the only instance, in which this method has been adopted, it has also been used for other manuscripts, to a very wide extent for the Bankipore Timur-namah and for the Jeypore Razm-namah, which seem to belong to one group as our book; all three not only show a great affinity of style, but have been painted by practically the same artists.

Now, the first question we have to ask, is-Do the names of the artists give any indication as to the period in which these manuscripts have been illustrated ? They certainly do with a high degree of probability.

In his well-known chapter on painting, contained in the Ain-i-Akbari,5 Abul Fazl mentions as the most outstanding among the numerous excellent painters of Akbar's court the following : Mir Sayyid Ali, Abdul Samad, Daswanth, Basawan, Kesu, Lal, Mukund, Muskin Farukh Beg, Madhu, Jagan, Khem Karan, Tara, Sanwlah, Haribans, Ram. Now, these same painters took an important part in the illustrations of our .manuscript. Eight of them, as a matter of fact, were responsible for the outline of the greatest number of pictures and did a great deal of the paintings as well, three others collaborated merely as painters and only four artists mentioned in the Ain do not occur among

2 PERCY BROWN: Indian Painting under the Mughals, Oxford [1924], p. 17 ff. 8 E.g. I. STCHOUKINE: La Peinture Indienne J I'Epoque des Grands Moghols, Paris, 1929 (Appendice).

4The Library of A. Chester Beatty. A Catalogue of the Indian Miniatures. By SIR THOMAS W. ARNOLD, edited and revised by J. V. S. WILKINSON [1936]. Introduction, p. xxvi.

6 The Ain-i-Akbari, transl. by Blochmann, Calcutta [1873], I, p. 107 ff.

those named in the inscriptions of our manuscript; namely Mir Sayyid Ali, Abdul Samad, Daswanth and Haribans.

Now, Mir Sayyid Ali, the great Persian painter, who, as well as Abdul Samad, followed Akbar's father, the emperor Humayun, from Persia to India, had already contributed to the famous Nizami of the British Museum, dated 1539, for which certainly only artists of established fame were employed, and must consequently have been a very old man when the Ain was written. Except for the great picture of the British Museum Princes of the House of Timur, attributed to him with great plausibility,6 we know only his work on the Hamza-namah, the earliest illustrated Mogul manuscript, in which he and Abdul Samad were the leading artists. Abdul Samad's antecedents in Persia are unknown, he may have been quite young when he joined Humay- un in the middle of the sixteenth century, and a signed picture of his is, as a matter of fact, contained in the Vizami of the Dyson Perrins Collection,7 which certainly ranges among the late manuscripts of the period. But he has not collaborated in any of the great manuscripts of the time, which can be easily explained, if we consider, that since 1577, he acted as master of the mint, which obviously left him time to paint miniatures occasionally, but not to take his part as a leading artist in such a vast undertaking as the illustrating of the Akbar-namah actually was. Surely his position would not have allowed him to play a secondary part, i.e., to be responsible only for a comparatively small section of the pictures, as it usually was the case with the minor painters. Daswanth, on the other hand, who, according to the Ain, was the greatest among the Indian painters, was no more among the living, when this panegyric was written.

So Haribans is the only artist mentioned by Abdul Fazl, whose absence from a collaboration on our manuscript cannot be accounted for; and Haribans seems to have been either a very unproductive artist, or, which is more probable, to have worked to a great extent on some unknown manuscripts, for his name occurs hardly ever in the works familiar to us.

All this means an astounding conformity between the literary authority-Abdul Fazl's chapter on painting-and this individual work of art-the Akbar-namah of the Victoria and Albert Museum. And we may well assume, that we have here definitely one of the manuscripts mentioned by the historian, when he says :8 ", Persian books, both prose and poetry, were ornamented with pictures and a very large number of paintings was thus selected.... The Chingiz-namah, the Zafar-namah, THIS BOOK, the Razm-namah . . . were all illustrated."

The Ain, intended to form a part of the Akbar- namah, which, owing to Abul Fazl's death, had to

6 BROWN: loc. cit. p. 53 and L. BINYON, J. V. S. WILKINSON, B. GRAY: Persian Miniature Painting, [193I], p. 119 if.

7 BROWN: loc. cit. pl. xxxvi. 8 Ain-i-Akbari. p. Io8.

136

A-4KBAR WA ECHIXG A FIGHE BETWEEW B-A KBAR WA ECHIXG A FIGHT BETWEEW TWO RELIGIO US SECT;S FOR A BA THI;&G TWO RELIGIO US SECES FOR A BA THIXG PLACE. BY BASAWAN AND TARA. PLACE. BY BASAWAN AND AST.

C-AKBAR WA 7-CHIXG 7-HE DRO WXIXG OF D-AKBAR'S EX7-RS IJV70 SURA 7-. 1)s1T

7WO OF HIS FOLLO WERS. BY LAL ANI) FARUKH BEG. SAN\VALA

PLATE I. AN AKBAR-NAMAH MANUSCRIPT

A-A DURBSR GIVEW BY AKBAR. I3Y LAL B-A DURBAR GIVEWBYAKBAR. BY LAL AND

AND RAM DAS. IBRAHIM KAHAR.

C-A DURBAR GIVE2Y BY AKBAR. BY JAGAN D-A DURBAR GIVEW BY AKBAR. BY JAGAN AND SURDAS. AND MADHU.

PLATE II. AN AKBAR-NAMAH MANUSCRIPrl

An Akbar-namah Manuscript

remain unfinished, was terminated I597-I598,9 and refers to the institutions as they were about I59010 ; we may safely assume that the bulk of our illustra- tions has been done at this time.

The general style is such as to confirm definitely the accuracy of this statement. It shows the culmination of the early Mogul style, just before it begins clearly to develop into its second stage, which was to last from about the last decade of Akbar's reign to the beginning of the reign of Shah Jehan.

As the most characteristical features of this art the following may be mentioned: for one thing, rising stress on the illustrative value of the pictures. This is a natural consequence of the emperor's interest in the producing and illustrating of new or comparatively new books, whilst the great Persian patrons were content to see the same books re- written and re-decorated over and over again with ever increasing perfection and elaboration. And there is no doubt, that in no other illustrations would historical truthfulness in representing the facts seem as important to Akbar, as where his own biography was concerned.

Now experience confirms, what common sense would anticipate : an increasing interest in historical and biographical subjects would not only demand from the artist a keener perception of naturalistic detail, but gradually lead to a more naturalistic conception of the whole visible world. And thus we find as another distinguishing trait of the Mogul painting of this period a new and more lifelike way of representing things and persons and of indicating their mutual relation within the surrounding space. For now the third dimension begins to be made more visible than ever before in Islamic painting.

Compared to Persian miniatures of the sixteenth century, with their softly flowing curves and the dignified poise of their figures, the Mogul paintings show a far greater vitality, a predilection for quick and energetic movement for crowded scenes charged with action, which mostly lead to a lessened sen- sibility to the beauty of an ornamentally balanced composition. The colours too have lost something of the exquisite harmony of Persian painting, they are cruder, more variegated and increasingly chosen from the point of view of obtaining naturalistic effects.

There is no doubt, that these innovations are partly due to the emperor's personality, but certainly the fact, that by now most of the leading artists are Indian, is at least as important. Again we have to quote Abul Fazl, for his well known words: " The best painters are the Indians, they surpass our conception of things."ll clearly refer to the greater affinity to nature he finds in the works of Indian painters if compared to the Persians. And this affinity to nature in the Akbar paintings shows to a

9 Akbar-namah. p. 378, Note 3. 10 BLOCHMANN: Preface to the Ain-i-Akbari. 11 Ain, p. 107.

great extent the same features, which are charac- teristic of the most ancient pictorial tradition of India. We shall have to deal later on with the nature of this connection.

The leading painters of our manuscript are: Muskin, who is responsible for the outline of'I9

pictures, then follows Lal with I8, Kesu Kalan with 15 and Basawan with I5-all of them men- tioned in the Ain, as was said before. Now we shall have to ask a question already put forward by other writers :12 is it possible to distinguish between the pictures of the different artists, are the painters to be recognized as individualities, whose personality is clearly reflected in their works ? There can, in any case, be no doubt whatever, that there is a noticeable difference of quality between the different illustrations; and we shall find, that, with very few exceptions, the illustrations signed by he same artist as are responsible for the outline are on the same level of workmanship. It is Basawan and Lal, among the Hindu and Muskin and Farukh Beg among the Islamic painters, who have attained the highest degree of perfection; and it is the illustra- tions executed by them which show to a higher extent than the others the unmistakable mark of personality, though in a far more restricted sense, than Europeans would understand it. Even the well known method of Lermolieff, which consists in comparing details, like the formation of the ears, the nostrils, the fingers, etc., of the different figures painted by an identical artist, in order to detect a sort of artistic handwriting, can be applied to our illustrations only in very few instances. On the one hand there is, regarding these minor features, an amazing similarity in the pictures of different artists; on the other hand-works, the outlines of which have been executed by one identical master, sometimes show differences, for which we may perhaps make the second master responsible, who did the colouring. But even when several pictures have been entirely carried out by one artist, painting as well as outline, they do not always show a greater similarity amongst themselves, than other pictures, done by quite different artists, are sometimes apt to display. We may assume that the oriental habit of doing a great and elaborate amount of copying after different schools and masters hinders the development of an individual " handwriting."

If we are yet able to detect some conformitywithin the production of certain masters, this conformity is of a more general kind.

Let us, from this point of view, consider a few minia- tures, of which Basawan has done the outline: PLATE I, A, of which Tara the elder has done the painting and PLATE I, B 13, on which Asi has collaborated, show Akbar watching a Fight between two Religious Sects for a Bathing Place, a fight in which some Moguls have taken part. The pictures, going into all the details of the text and displaying all the minutest peculiarities in appear-

12 At greater length: W. STAUDE : Moghul-Maler der Akbar-Zeit, Vienna [I935].

I39

An Akbar-namah Manuscript

ance and costume of the persons concerned, prove the high illustrative gift of the artist. But where he is really outstanding among his fellow artists is his ability to render the human body with thorough understanding and in full plasticity of form, a plasticity which is achieved both through the broadening and thinning of the most expressive outline and through an energetic inner modelling in dark shades and strongly contrasted lights. The violent movements, though excessive, are still in concordance with the possibilities given by life itself. The faces are varied and full of expression, not only showing the differences of type, but also the varying moods and feelings.

In several instances-e.g. in the case of the two sannyasi with the shellhorns 'in Plate I, A, or of the dying man with the surrounding ascetics in Plate I, B- he combines two or more figures into a group, in which every movement, every contour of the different persons is so closely connected as to form a complete entity. Such expressive, highly plastic figures and groups are also found in other paintings Basawan did in the Akbar- namah, e.g., in a picture, where the emperor is shown attacking a tigress while several of his men are in grasp with the cubs.14 There can be no doubt that we are witnessing here the revival of very ancient Indian traditions ; for all these different traits-great plasticity of the human body, achieved through contour and inner modelling, the strong gestures and expressive faces sometimes approaching the grotesque-they all can be traced back to the oldest paintings of India.

Unfortunately there is to be noticed a great inequality of workmanship-as for instance in the most conven- tional and lifeless figures in the background of the hunting scene. It seems, that Basawan has left a great deal of work to his collaborators, very much to the detri- ment of his pictures. Not only are the single items done less carefully, but sometimes even the rhythmical flow of the whole composition is suddenly interrupted by the harsher outline, the utterly different attitude of figures obviously not designed by Basawan himself. The Battle of the Sannyasi, especially the left part of it, is a happy exception, and seems to a large' extent to be executed by the master himself.

The pictures, for the outline of which Lal is responsible, show a greater uniformity of workmanship. You get the impression, that he left not much more than the colouring properly speaking, to the "painter." It is one of the strong points in Lal, that, among all the numerous persons of his pictures, none seems to be a mere super, an uninterested bystander, but that all of them are taking an active part in the doings of the pro- tagonists. And no figure remains isolated but each one is, through his gestures and glances, brought into connection with the others, so that the flowing rhythm of the composition shows no interruption whatever. He also shuns to repeat over and again the same gestures in different figures, as the other painters often do, and thus evades monotony.

All this may be emphasized by comparing two abso- lutely analogous scenes, each representing a Durbar given by Akbar, the one by Lal [PLATE II, A, in collabor- ation with Ram Das and PLATE II, B, with Ibrahim Kahar) ; the other by Jagan (PLATE II, C, with Surdas, PLATE II, D, with Madhu).15

13 Victoria and Albert Museum, No. 6i, 62. 14 V. A. Mus. No. 17.

Though this double picture is by no means one of Lal's best, and merely chosen for the sake of comparison, it definitely shows the characteristic display of variegated, but harmonious movements, which bind the figures together in curved lines, all centred in the main figure, the emperor.

Obviously the same principle of composition is followed up by Jagan, but here it is not brought to anything like the same achievement.

An illustration showing Lal at his best is PLATE I, c (painting by Sanwala)16. Akbar, having passed the river on horseback, is witnessing the drowning of two of his followers. The isolated, ample figure of the emperor in quiet grandeur is beautifully contrasted to the wildly gesticulating groups of his men.

Now both the predelection for expressive, even gro- tesque movements and the way, too, in which all these violently agitated figures are linked together through some strange, dancelike rhythms-widely differing from the more harmonious principles of Persian compositions -have their antecedents in the old cave paintings of India. Lal as well as Basawan is deeply rooted in the tradition of his country, a tradition, which has clearly lived throughout the centuries, though we are not able to trace all its different phases.

It has been mentioned before, that in their attempt to represent facts of real life as clearly and as vividly as possible, the Mogul painters also gradually deviate from the conventions adopted by Persianr painters in suggesting the third dimension, the dimension of space.

Let us, from this point of view, look at PLATE III, A, B, which we have to consider as a unity (outline by Muskin, painting by Bhura and Sarwan). 17.

The subject given is The Siege of Fort Chitor in Rajputana through Akbar and the momentous event depicted by the artist on the left side is the explosion of a mine, whilst on the right the work on fortification and the firing is going on.

You could not say, that the Indian miniaturist has completely broken with the Persian way of showing the foreground as a steeply sloping plane and of using different points of vision for the different parts of the picture, so as to give the most complete aspect of things. This would mean a break with the traditions of his own country as well, for these same features are typical for the old Indian wall paintings too. But where the Mogul artist widely differs from the Persian painter is the energy which he displays in indicating depth within the different scenes he combines into one miniature. The various buildings, the numerous recesses formed between walls and rocks, are all shown in their cubic quality and are well adapted for enshrining all animated and lifeless objects thus indicating the space allotted to them.

In all this, Muskin follows the same principles, as most of his fellow artists do, for even in the earliest manuscript of the Mogul school, in the Hamsa-namah,18 these same

15 V. A. Mus. No. 27, 28 (Akbar receiving the Ambassador of Shah Tahmasp, Akbar-namah, trans. Beveridge II, p. 262) V. A. Mus. No. 95, 94 (Akbar at Dilapur, in I57I, loc. cit. II, p. 528, 529.)

16 V. A. Mus. No. 54, loc. cit. II, p. 419. 17 V. A. Mus. No. 67, 66, loc. cit. II, p. 468. The name of

"Muskin " clearly shows him being a Mahommedan, but this fact does not by any means prove a Persian descendancy. He may have belonged to one of the old Islamic tribes of India or even have been one of the many Hindus who were converted to Islam under the Mughal regime.

1 40

An Akbar-namah Manuscript An Akbar-namah Manuscript

tendencies are already to be noticed and they obviously are an ancient Indian inheritance.19 But where Muskin seems to be outstanding among the other masters, who worked on our manuscript-though they all occasionally adopt the same devices-is the very clever way in which he bases his entire compositions on diagonal lines, which, in binding together the different parts of the pictures, add to the impression of depth already given by the different scenes. Furthermore, he disposes, wherever it is possible, these different scenes of action on different levels, indicated through the mountainous inequality of the soil or through architectural devices; he also makes his "receptacles"-houses, tents, rocks, etc., -as well as the single figures and groups overlap, so that the ground loses a little of its unnatural extension. The remoteness of the background is clearly indicated through a tangible difference of size between its details and those of the foreground, and, comparing his pictures with those of other painters, we shall detect a better pro- portion between figures and architecture or landscape.

Two examples, chosen for their similarity of subject- PLATE III, C21 (outline by Muskin, painting by Sarwan), representing The Building of Agra, and PLATE III, D22, (outline by Tulsi the elder, painting by Bhawani), showing The Building of Fathpur Sikri-may emphasize this difference.

It is obvious, that Muskin, though he is deeply rooted in Indian tradition, or perhaps just because this trend is so much stronger in him than the Persian one, was one of the first Mogul painters who really absorbed the European influences, which were to become so much stronger only a few years later; and surely it is not a mere chance, that very complicated subjects, as the sieges and assailments of mountain forts, have been chiefly assigned to Muskin, in the Bankipore Timur- namah as well as in our manuscript. It may be supposed, that in all these pictures he has also exercised some influence on the colouring; for they all show much similarity; and in most of them the clouds of fire and smoke emanating from guns and cannons help, by enveloping in a haze the contours of far away things, to suggest the impression of their remoteness.

Farukh Beg is, in our manuscript, the noblest rep- resentative of a different tradition. Coming from Persia, he has remained true to his origins in the greater poise of his pictures, in the minuteness of details, in the subtle harmonies of his colouring. In no other illustrations of the Akbar-namah do we meet with such a fine net of ornaments spread over the architectural features, over

18 H. GLUCK; Die indischen Miniaturen des Hamza-Romanes, Zurich, Vienna, Leipzig [I925], 19 Compare the subtle analysis given by ST. KRAMRISCH: A Survey of Painting in the Deccan, London, [1937], P. 4 ff.

20 V. A. Mus., No. 46, Akb. N. II, p. 372. 21 V. A. Mus., No. 86, Akb. N. II, p. 530. 22 V. A. Mus., No. I 17, Akb. N. II, p. 25, 26.

tendencies are already to be noticed and they obviously are an ancient Indian inheritance.19 But where Muskin seems to be outstanding among the other masters, who worked on our manuscript-though they all occasionally adopt the same devices-is the very clever way in which he bases his entire compositions on diagonal lines, which, in binding together the different parts of the pictures, add to the impression of depth already given by the different scenes. Furthermore, he disposes, wherever it is possible, these different scenes of action on different levels, indicated through the mountainous inequality of the soil or through architectural devices; he also makes his "receptacles"-houses, tents, rocks, etc., -as well as the single figures and groups overlap, so that the ground loses a little of its unnatural extension. The remoteness of the background is clearly indicated through a tangible difference of size between its details and those of the foreground, and, comparing his pictures with those of other painters, we shall detect a better pro- portion between figures and architecture or landscape.

Two examples, chosen for their similarity of subject- PLATE III, C21 (outline by Muskin, painting by Sarwan), representing The Building of Agra, and PLATE III, D22, (outline by Tulsi the elder, painting by Bhawani), showing The Building of Fathpur Sikri-may emphasize this difference.

It is obvious, that Muskin, though he is deeply rooted in Indian tradition, or perhaps just because this trend is so much stronger in him than the Persian one, was one of the first Mogul painters who really absorbed the European influences, which were to become so much stronger only a few years later; and surely it is not a mere chance, that very complicated subjects, as the sieges and assailments of mountain forts, have been chiefly assigned to Muskin, in the Bankipore Timur- namah as well as in our manuscript. It may be supposed, that in all these pictures he has also exercised some influence on the colouring; for they all show much similarity; and in most of them the clouds of fire and smoke emanating from guns and cannons help, by enveloping in a haze the contours of far away things, to suggest the impression of their remoteness.

Farukh Beg is, in our manuscript, the noblest rep- resentative of a different tradition. Coming from Persia, he has remained true to his origins in the greater poise of his pictures, in the minuteness of details, in the subtle harmonies of his colouring. In no other illustrations of the Akbar-namah do we meet with such a fine net of ornaments spread over the architectural features, over

18 H. GLUCK; Die indischen Miniaturen des Hamza-Romanes, Zurich, Vienna, Leipzig [I925], 19 Compare the subtle analysis given by ST. KRAMRISCH: A Survey of Painting in the Deccan, London, [1937], P. 4 ff.

20 V. A. Mus., No. 46, Akb. N. II, p. 372. 21 V. A. Mus., No. 86, Akb. N. II, p. 530. 22 V. A. Mus., No. I 17, Akb. N. II, p. 25, 26.

the garments, harnesses and standards as in PLATE I, D, Akbar's Entry into Surat,23 and nowhere do the flowers of the lawns, the stones of the paths, the leaves and blossoms of the trees form as regular and as ruglike a pattern as they do here. The figures too have a type absolutely their own. Of the three pictures he contri- buted to our manuscript, two, according to the signa- tures, have been done by him alone whilst in the third one (Akbar Watching two Fighting Elephants)24 only the portraits have been added by Basawan, a fact which seems to emphasize the gap between him and his fellow-artists, whose colouring may to a certain extent have deviated of his own conceptions. For even in this miniature, his own way of chosing very soft hues and intermediate notes is quite remarkable, though this picture is much more assimilated to the bulk of the other illustrations than both the others.

These comparatively short notes-short, if we consider the great amount of pictures of our manu- script and the amount of masters who have worked on it-aim at putting forward the following points :

I. That we have here the identical book, or one of the books made for the emperor and mentioned by Abul Fazl-for otherwise it would be a strange coincidence indeed that exactly the identical masters he names are prominent in our manuscript, whilst it seems quite natural, that they should work on the manuscript, in which both he and his imperial master were most interested.

2. That, in spite of the great equality of style throughout the whole work, due perhaps partly to the collaboration of several artists on the same pic- ture, it still seems possible to recognize at least the most prominent of the artists as distinct personalities, though not in our, the European, sense.

3. That at that period ofAkbar's reign the Indian painters were the leading artists at his court. And the works of these painters, though very much in- debted to Persia, definitely show that they are rooted in the old pictorial traditions of India though until now no direct line can be drawn from the old classical art, as we know it from Ajanta, to these relatively modern paintings. Perhaps we may assume, that it is a certain affinity-an innate sense for volume and space, a desire to represent things in a way suggesting their reality-which made them able to assimilate up to a certain point western influences, though these influences do not yet play in our manuscript the important part characteristic of them in the latest phase of Akbar's reign.

23 V. A. Mus., No. 8i,Akb. N. III, p. 40. 24 V. A. Mus., No. I15, Akb. N. II. p. 432.

the garments, harnesses and standards as in PLATE I, D, Akbar's Entry into Surat,23 and nowhere do the flowers of the lawns, the stones of the paths, the leaves and blossoms of the trees form as regular and as ruglike a pattern as they do here. The figures too have a type absolutely their own. Of the three pictures he contri- buted to our manuscript, two, according to the signa- tures, have been done by him alone whilst in the third one (Akbar Watching two Fighting Elephants)24 only the portraits have been added by Basawan, a fact which seems to emphasize the gap between him and his fellow-artists, whose colouring may to a certain extent have deviated of his own conceptions. For even in this miniature, his own way of chosing very soft hues and intermediate notes is quite remarkable, though this picture is much more assimilated to the bulk of the other illustrations than both the others.

These comparatively short notes-short, if we consider the great amount of pictures of our manu- script and the amount of masters who have worked on it-aim at putting forward the following points :

I. That we have here the identical book, or one of the books made for the emperor and mentioned by Abul Fazl-for otherwise it would be a strange coincidence indeed that exactly the identical masters he names are prominent in our manuscript, whilst it seems quite natural, that they should work on the manuscript, in which both he and his imperial master were most interested.

2. That, in spite of the great equality of style throughout the whole work, due perhaps partly to the collaboration of several artists on the same pic- ture, it still seems possible to recognize at least the most prominent of the artists as distinct personalities, though not in our, the European, sense.

3. That at that period ofAkbar's reign the Indian painters were the leading artists at his court. And the works of these painters, though very much in- debted to Persia, definitely show that they are rooted in the old pictorial traditions of India though until now no direct line can be drawn from the old classical art, as we know it from Ajanta, to these relatively modern paintings. Perhaps we may assume, that it is a certain affinity-an innate sense for volume and space, a desire to represent things in a way suggesting their reality-which made them able to assimilate up to a certain point western influences, though these influences do not yet play in our manuscript the important part characteristic of them in the latest phase of Akbar's reign.

23 V. A. Mus., No. 8i,Akb. N. III, p. 40. 24 V. A. Mus., No. I15, Akb. N. II. p. 432.

LEONARDO'S FANTASTIC DRAWINGS-I. LEONARDO'S FANTASTIC DRAWINGS-I. BY MARTIN JOHNSON, D.Sc. fi y- aT is now recognized that the strange

*xT ~genius of Leonardo must be approached not only through his few surviving paintings and doubtful sculptures, but also through his many hundred drawings

BY MARTIN JOHNSON, D.Sc. fi y- aT is now recognized that the strange

*xT ~genius of Leonardo must be approached not only through his few surviving paintings and doubtful sculptures, but also through his many hundred drawings

and several thousand pages of MSS. It seems likely that the sheets now treasured at Windsor, Paris, Milan, and elsewhere, are fairly representative, in spite of the dispersal which began about fifty years after his death in I519, when the descendants of

and several thousand pages of MSS. It seems likely that the sheets now treasured at Windsor, Paris, Milan, and elsewhere, are fairly representative, in spite of the dispersal which began about fifty years after his death in I519, when the descendants of

I41 I41

A-THESIEGE OFFORTCHITOR I.,VRA7PUTAXA BY MUSKIN AND BHURA.

B-THE SIEGE OF FOR T CHI TOR IX KAi- PUfAWA. BY MUSKIN AND SARWAN.

C-THE BUILDIXS OF AGRA. BY MUSKIN D-THE BUILDING OF FA THPUR SISRI. BY

AND SARWAN. TULSI THE ELDER AND BHAWANI.

PLATE III. AN AKBAR-NANIAH MANUSCRIPT