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Calligraphy: Preface to the Anvar-i Suhaili
c. 1590
- Medium
- Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
- Classification
- Calligraphy
- Dimensions
- Page: 36.1 x 24.8 cm (14 3/16 x 9 3/4 in.); Text field: 16 x 8.3 cm (6 5/16 x 3 1/4 in.)
- Culture
- Northern India, Mughal court, 16th century
- 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 lovers have met in a remote wilderness location, away from the city shown in the distance. However, their affair has run its course, and they decide to part ways, each walking in opposite directions through an ominous landscape, where strange rock formations and an oversized serpent-slain by foxes gnawing on its innards-lend a sense of foreboding. As Mughal court painting developed into the last decades of the 16th century, artists began using increasingly muted colors and gentler shading techniques than they did in the more robust Adventures of Hamza at the left. The omission of a light source and shadows adds to a timeless, otherworldly impression to the landscape.
