This painting shows Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire, supervising the construction of his beloved garden at Istalif, near Kabul in Afghanistan. The tall, regal figure in the orange-red robe standing under the richly decorated tent is Babur himself, and all around him workers are busy laying stones, carrying materials, and carefully shaping the landscape all under his watchful eye. It is essentially a royal "home renovation" scene from the 1500s, painted with extraordinary detail and warmth.
What strikes you immediately is that this is not a battle scene or a coronation. Babur was a powerful warrior-king, but he deeply loved gardens, nature, and order and by choosing to illustrate this quiet moment of creation, the painting tells us that for him, building beauty was just as meaningful as conquering territory. He even wrote about this garden himself, noting that the stream flowing through it used to be "zig-zag and irregular" until he had it made straight. You can almost feel that same instinct for order reflected in the composition itself rough digging and earthy chaos at the bottom of the page gradually giving way to calm, elegance, and shade at the top, as if the painting is showing us civilisation taking shape before our eyes.
What makes this even more layered is that it wasn't painted during Babur's own lifetime. His grandson Emperor Akbar commissioned it nearly sixty years later, which means the painting is really an act of memory and identity Akbar preserving his grandfather's personality, his humanity, his love of the natural world, for generations to come. It is Akbar quietly saying: this is who we are, and this is where we come from.
Two artists collaborated to create it Basawan, who designed the composition and drawing, and Suraj Gujarati, who painted it. And one of the most moving things about their work is how the labourers are treated. Each worker is painted as an individual different postures, different expressions, different clothing not as background decoration but as real human beings caught in a moment of effort. For a royal manuscript, that is a remarkably humane choice, and it speaks to the spirit of Mughal art at its finest: deeply observant, endlessly curious, and always alive to the dignity of ordinary life.
This painting transforms empire-building into an act of cultivation rather than conquest. By depicting Babur overseeing the construction of his garden at Istalif, the artists reveal a ruler invested in shaping beauty as carefully as territory. The composition moves from raw labour below to ordered serenity above, mirroring Babur’s desire to impose harmony upon nature. Commissioned later by Akbar, the work becomes both remembrance and political inheritance. Its sensitive portrayal of labourers highlights the Mughal court’s remarkable attention to human individuality, dignity, and everyday life.
