Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Hunting with falcons in a landscape (recto)
attributed to Abd al-Samad (Persian, c. 1510–1600)
c. 1558–60; borders added probably 1700s
- Medium
- Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Page: 35.7 x 24.3 cm (14 1/16 x 9 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- Mughal India, court of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Gift in honor of Madeline Neves Clapp; Gift of Mrs. Henry White Cannon by exchange; Bequest of Louise T. Cooper; Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund; From the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Mughal princes hunted on horseback with falcons. The hunting party would ride out into the wild and flush the prey from the brush. Then, its hood removed, the falcon would chase the prey and bring it down.
This important work is thought to have been painted by one of the Persian artists Akbar’s father brought to India from Iran shortly after his arrival in India. The delicacy of the diminutive figures and the gently modeled rocks of the arid landscape contrast to the boldly dynamic paintings made by Indian artists.
