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Portrait of a kneeling holy man, from the Prince Salim Album
attributed to Mir Sayyid Ali (Persian, active in Iran 1540s–50, active in India 1555–1580)
c. 1556–60; border c. 1602
- Medium
- Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper, laid down on an album page with cream borders decorated with gold flowers and geometric motifs
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Painting: 12 x 7.1 cm (4 3/4 x 2 13/16 in.); Overall: 23.3 x 14.9 cm (9 3/16 x 5 7/8 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
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
The kneeling figure is a charlatan holy man who wears the blue robe of a Sufi mystic. According to the inscriptions above and below the painting, he acts humble and pious for monetary gain rather than sincerity of devotion. Images of charlatan holy men recur in Mughal painting, including in the Cleveland Tuti-Nama.
Mir Sayyid Ali was the first head of the Mughal workshop under Akbar. He was responsible for training Indian artists to adopt Persian sensibilities, admired by elites of the Islamic world during the 1400s to at least the 1700s.
