Akbar
| Support Type: | Paper |
| Paint Type: | Watercolor |
| Current Location: | Victoria and Albert Museum in London, United Kingdom. |
| Location History: | The painting was initially created between 1590 and 1595 in the imperial Mughal workshops in Lahore, and it was then transferred to the royal libraries of Agra and Delhi under the rule of the consecutive emperors Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan. With the empire’s fragmentation, the manuscript was incorporated into the Awadh kingdom’s prince’s collection (also known as Oudh). Subsequently, Major General John Clarke, a British colonial officer, purchased it between 1858 and 1862 and brought it to South London. It was then sold by his widow and became part of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s South Asian collection in London, the United Kingdom, after being separated from its binding. Currently, the 116-page manuscript book is stored there under inventory number IS.2:92-1896. |
The piece of art under review is a sixteenth-century Mughal miniature, Akbar Hunting Black Buck with Trained Cheetahs (c.1590-1595). It was painted as an illustration for the Akbarnama (The Book of Akbar), a detailed depiction of the emperor’s biography painted on the order of Akbar himself in 1589. The composition was made collectively by order of the emperor’s, with La'l being responsible for general layout and design (tarh) and Sanwala executing the painting (amal). As the tradition of the genre implies, the miniature represents a hunting recreation (qamargah), presented as a multi-tiered composition set within an irregular rocky terrain of the Persian garden landscape with patches of vegetation. The upper right corner depicts the emperor himself on a piebald horse, with the hand holding the reins attentively watching at his retinue handling the hunting animals. An Asiatic cheetah (yuz), let loos from the huge wooden bullock cart at the lower part of the composition, is seen lunging down to kill one of the matured blackbucks, with others scattering in panic. Additionally, the two attendants at the mid-ground take care of another cheetah, blindfolded to demonstrate the special skills of the Mughal taming and using wild animals for big game hunting to depict the supreme power of the ruler.
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