The Great Mughals, Art, Architecture and Opulence, edited by Susan Stronge, is a new book published by V&A publications to coincide with the exhibition currently on display at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.
Both the book and exhibition focus on the distinct flowering of Indian art during the reign of three generations of Mughal Emperors: Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan. Through a series of essays and high-quality photographs, the book examines stylistic changes that emerged over the course of their respective reigns.
Following the expansion of the empire by Akbar, his son Jahangir inherited the Mughal empire at its zenith. With Imperial coffers overflowing, the empire attracted highly skilled artisans that led to a unique flowering of Indian art reflecting the highly refined, wealthy cosmopolitan Mughal court.
Susan Strong, Curator of the exhibition, writes in the Preface:
Regions with distinctive, deeply embedded craft traditions came under Mughal control and supplied the court with luxury artefacts. An evolving, recognisably ‘Mughal style’ came into being, in which Iranian influences and concepts merged with those of Hindustan. Contact with European art brought to court by Jesuit missionaries from Goa added a further dimension.
The book is divided into three sections, one for each emperor, and features high-quality photographs of a wealth of paintings, jades, jewellery, metalwork, textiles, ceramics and architecture from the V&A collections and international collections such as the al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait.
The book has a strong selection of images of Indian paintings and features a wide variety for the reader to enjoy. The painted folios of the Akbarnama, for example, exhibit chaos and dynamism while the artist Mansur’s paintings are testimony to his acute detailed observations of wildlife. European influences on Indian paintings also emerge as Mughal artists began copying imported prints and later incorporated European perspectives into Mughal paintings.
With guest essays from a variety of specialists and a bibliography this publication is for general readership and does not demand prior knowledge of the Mughals or Indian art and therefore can be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in Indian art.
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