16 Facts About Mughal miniature

Mughal miniature emperors were Muslims and they are credited with consolidating Islam in South Asia, and spreading Muslim arts and culture as well as the faith.

Mughal miniature painting style later spread to other Indian courts, both Muslim and Hindu, and later Sikh, and was often used to depict Hindu subjects.

From fairly early the Mughal miniature style made a strong feature of realistic portraiture, normally in profile, and influenced by Western prints, which were available at the Mughal miniature court.

Mughal miniature sees considerable borrowings from Chinese animal paintings on paper, which seem not to have been highly valued by Chinese collectors, and so reached India.

Mughal miniature court painting, as opposed to looser variants of the Mughal miniature style produced in regional courts and cities, drew little from indigenous non-Muslim traditions of painting.

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In contrast Mughal miniature painting was "almost entirely secular", although religious figures were sometimes portrayed.

Mughal miniature had studied painting in his youth under Abd as-Samad, though it is not clear how far these studies went.

Mughal miniature encouraged his royal atelier to take up the single point perspective favoured by European artists, unlike the flattened multi-layered style used in traditional miniatures.

Mughal miniature particularly encouraged paintings depicting events of his own life, individual portraits, and studies of birds, flowers and animals.

Mughal miniature paintings made during Jahangir's reign continued the trend of Naturalism and were influenced by the resurgence of Persian styles and subjects over more traditional Hindu.

Mughal miniature paintings continued to survive, but the decline had set in.

Some sources however note that a few of the best Mughal miniature paintings were made for Aurangzeb, speculating that they believed that he was about to close the workshops and thus exceeded themselves in his behalf.

Mughal miniature painting generally involved a group of artists, one to decide and outline the composition, the second to actually paint, and perhaps a third who specialized in portraiture, executing individual faces.

Sub-imperial school of Mughal miniature painting included artists such as Mushfiq, Kamal, and Fazl.

Mughal-style miniature paintings are still being created today by a small number of artists in Lahore concentrated mainly in the National College of Arts.

Mir Sayyid Ali's depiction of a young scholar in the Mughal miniature Empire, reading and writing a commentary on the Quran, 1559.