Deccan paintings of Hyderabad
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Deccani painting is the form of Indian miniature painting produced in the Deccan region of Central India, in the various Muslim capitals of the Deccan sultanates that emerged from the break-up of the Bahmani Sultanate by 1520. These were Bijapur, Golkonda, Ahmadnagar, Bidar, and Berar. The main period was between the late 16th century and the mid-17th, with something of a revival in the mid-18th century, by then centred on Hyderabad.[2][3]
The Muslim rulers of the Deccan, many of them Shia, had their own links with the Persianate world, rather than having to rely on those of the imperial Mughal court.[9] In the same way, contacts through the large textile trade, and nearby Goa, led to some identifiable borrowings from European images, which perhaps had a more general stylistic influence as well. There also appear to have been Hindu artists who moved north to the Deccan after the sultans combined to heavily defeat the Vijayanagara Empire in 1565, and sack the capital, Hampi.[10]
Contents
1 Early period, to 1600
2 Subjects and style
3 Influence
4 Decline
5 Notes
6 References
7 Further reading
Early period, to 1600
The young Ibrahim Adil Shah II hawking, c. 1590, St. Petersburg.[11]
Some of the earliest surviving paintings are the twelve illustrations of a manuscript Tarif-i-Hussain Shahi, an epic-style poem on the life of Sultan Hussain Nizam Shah I of Ahmadnagar, leader of the Deccan alliance that defeated the Vijayanagara Empire. The manuscript was commissioned by his widow when she was acting as regent c. 1565–69, and is now in the Bharat Itihas Sanshodhak Mandal, Pune.[12] Six of the paintings, most unusually for India, show the queen prominently beside her husband, and another a traditional female-centred scene. Most of the portraits of the queen were scratched out or overpainted after her son Murtaza Nizam Shah I rebelled and imprisoned her in 1569.[13]
There are 400–800 illustrations in the Bijapur manuscript Nujum-ul-Ulum (Stars of Science), an astronomical and astrological encyclopaedia of 1570–71, in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin.[14]
Ragamala paintings, sets illustrating (by evoking their moods) the various raga musical forms, appear to have been an innovation of the Deccan. There is a large dispersed group, probably originally forming several sets, of late sixteenth-century Ragamala paintings, which has been much discussed. They are similar in style, but by several different hands and with a considerable range of quality, with the best "among the most beautiful Indian paintings from any period". They were probably made for Hindu patrons, and may have been produced in a provincial centre well away from the capitals. There were a number of Hindu rajas in the northern Deccan, feudatories of the sultans.[15]
By about 1590 styles at the courts of Ahmadnagar and Bijapur had reached a brilliant maturity,[16] The "decadent fancifulness" of the Lady with the Myna Bird[17] and the young Ibrahim Adil Shah II hawking,[18] both illustrated here, are famous examples of Deccani distinctiveness.
Ragamala painting, Hindola Raga, c. 1585 (see text)
Scene from the Pune Tarif-i-Hussain Shahi, 1565–69, with the queen later erased.
Lady with the Myna Bird, Golconda or Bijapur, c. 1605, Chester Beatty Library.[19]
A Composite Elephant Ridden by a Prince, c. 1600, LACMA
Ibrahim Adil Shah II riding his favourite elephant Atash Khan, Bijapur, c. 1600.[20]
Young Prince and Mentor, c. 1600
Subjects and style
Composite Buraq, National Museum, New Delhi, Hyderabad, 1770–75.[21]
Beside the usual portraits and illustrations to literary works, there are sometimes illustrated chronicles, such as the Tuzuk-i-Asafiya. A Deccan speciality (also sometimes found in other media, such as ivory)[22] is the "composite animal" a large animal made up of many smaller images of other animals. A composite Buraq and an elephant are illustrated here. Rulers are often given large haloes, following Mughal precedent. Servants fan their masters or mistresses with cloths, rather than the chowris or peacock-feather fans seen elsewhere,[23] and swords usually have the straight Deccan form.[24]
Elephants were very popular in both the life and art of the Deccani courts, and artists revelled in depicting them behaving badly during the periodic musth hormonal overloads affecting bull elephants.[25] There was also a genre of drawings with some colour using marbling effects in the bodies of horses and elephants.[26] Apart from elephants, studies of animals or plants were less common in the Deccan than in Mughal painting, and when they occur they often have a less realistic style, with a "fanciful palette of intense colors".[27]
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