Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Sultan Murad and a Consort
Attributed here to Manohar (active 1582–ca. 1624)
ca. 1597
- Medium
- Opaque watercolor and gold on paper
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- H x W: 17.2 x 9.8 cm (6 3/4 x 3 7/8 in)
- Culture
- Himalayan peoples
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Asian Art
- Credit line
- Purchase — Charles Lang Freer Endowment
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), 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 Smithsonian Institution
About this work
This image is an unusually intimate portrait of royal lovers reclining in a garden setting. It portrays Prince Murad, the intellectually inclined second son of Mughal emperor Akbar, together with his beloved young wife, Mirza, daughter of Akbar's foster brother. Since Mughal artists aimed for verisimilitude, we may assume that Mirza was a dark-haired, slender figure with a sharp nose and pointed chin. However, the seclusion of women within the zenana (women's chambers) suggests that the artist may have based his portrait on verbal descriptions.
