Miniature, youth offering wine to a girl

Some artworks tell a story with a single gesture. In this painting, a young man is painted holding out a cup of wine to a girl, and the moment seems small and intimate, and yet it belongs to the courtly world of Persian-style painting. The Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston, holds the work with (accession 15.24) and ascribed it to Aqa Riza. This is from Mughal India at the end of the 16th century and measures 33 × 22.3 cm, which suggests a full album leaf. The collector Denman Waldo Ross owned it by 1913 and gave it to the museum in 1915. According to Soucek (1986), Aqa Riza was an Iranian-trained painter closely associated with Prince Salim, the future emperor Jahangir, during Salim’s residence at Allahabad. Soucek notes that his signed works range from 1592 to 1604 and carry dedications to Salim. The same entry describes two modes in his painting. His fully colored mode, with its decorative surface patterns, reflects his Iranian training. His pale-wash mode reflects adaptation to Mughal taste, with European-influenced modeling and looser brushwork. As per Haghighatjoo (2012), Salim’s painters made adaptations from European engravings, many with Christian subjects, and Aqa Riza studied and applied them. The author argues that he took on European shadow and light but placed these elements inside an Iranian compositional framework. Haghighatjoo concludes that he remained faithful to Persian aesthetics. As per Purinton and Watters (1991), painters in this tradition built up opaque layers of color over a preliminary drawing. They burnished the paper to give it a smooth, slightly glossy surface. Their analysis found ultramarine and white lead to be the most commonly used pigments, with vermilion or cinnabar as the most used red and orpiment as the most popular yellow. The authors also report that gold was applied as ground particles in a medium and not as leaf. Because Aqa Riza was trained in this Persian tradition (Soucek, 1986), these findings indicate the likely working methods behind his paintings. The MFA record does not state the medium of this particular work, so these materials describe the tradition, not a confirmed analysis of this painting. Purinton and Watters (1991) also observe that Persian paintings often illustrate poetry and were made for poetic settings. This painting can be read in the same spirit, as an intimate courtly moment presented with refinement. Its attribution rests on the MFA’s cataloguing, and the museum does not publish an interpretation of this specific work.