This painting passed through the Mughal royal library from Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, sealed 1668-69) and later the Nawab of Rampur's collection (seals 1766-1794), before being acquired in India by Major General John Clarke (Commissioner of Oudh, 1858–1862) and finally purchased by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1896 from his widow, where it remains today.
This painting forms part of the Akbarnama, an official chronicle of Emperor Akbar's rule, now preserved at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It captures a deeply human historical episode where Muhammad Amin Diwan leading the grieving widow and infant son of Bairam Khan to refuge in Ahmedabad after Bairam Khan was murdered in 1561.
The painting is a miniature created using opaque watercolor on paper, which was the standard technique for manuscripts produced in the Mughal court. The artists in Akbar's workshop used fine brushes made from squirrel hair. They also applied color layer upon layer and once the colors were built up, they finished the work with feather-soft strokes known as pardakht. The imperial workshop had access to the finest available pigments and papers, allowing for work of remarkable richness.
Akbar himself ordered the Akbarnama to be recorded as the official of his reign. The historian of his court, Abu'l Fazl, wrote it in Persian between 1590 and 1596. This version is believed to be the earliest illustrated one that still survives. The painting shows how Indian and Persian art styles came together at Akbar's court, where Hindu painters and Persian masters worked side by side, blending their different techniques into a new style of their own. The artist named for this folio, Mukund, is singled out by Abu'l Fazl himself among the foremost painters of the age in the A'in-i Akbari. That he executed this page entirely on his own — atypical for a manuscript usually assembled through team collaboration — speaks to his standing within the workshop and the precise, restrained draftsmanship that marked his hand.
The little boy being carried to safety in this painting grew up to become Abd al-Rahim Khan-i-Khanan who later became a general, and a great supporter of the arts. He wrote poetry in Persian and Hindavi. His tomb on Mathura Road in Delhi still stands, marking his remarkable journey from a frightened orphan fleeing danger as a child to one of the most celebrated cultural figures of Mughal India. His tomb stands today as a marker of his journey from a fatherless child fleeing danger to one of Mughal India's most celebrated cultural figures.
The composition masterfully balances narrative tension and movement, using a high viewpoint and rhythmic diagonals to guide the eye across the rocky terrain. The vibrant opaque watercolours, fine line work, and integrated Persian text panel showcase a seamless synthesis of Persian landscape elements and indigenous Indian multi-figurative visual pacing.
