recto Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College
recto Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College
This object does not yet have a description.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1958.233
Title
Virgin and Child with Angels (painting by a Portuguese artist), folio from the Gulshan Album; mounted with an ornamental border by a Mughal artist
Classification
Albums
Work Type
album folio
Date
c. 1595-1600
Places
Creation Place: South Asia, India
Period
Mughal period
Culture
Indian
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/201468

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Opaque watercolor and gold on paper
Dimensions
image with border: 42 x 26.5 cm (16 9/16 x 10 7/16 in.)

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of John Goelet
Accession Year
1958
Object Number
1958.233
Division
Asian and Mediterranean Art
Contact
am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Descriptions

Description
This composition of the Virgin and Child, painted after a Flemish engraving by Antonius Wierix dated 1584, is attributed to an unnamed Portuguese artist brought by the Jesuit mission to the court of Mughal emperor Akbar in 1595. The Jesuits mistook the Mughals’ appetite for Christian iconography as an openness to convert to Catholicism, when in fact such images were exploited to articulate Akbar’s religious policy of “universal peace” (sulh-i kull) with all faiths.

Mary (Maryam) is venerated by Muslims as well as Christians. An entire chapter in the Qurʾan is dedicated to her as the mother of Jesus (ʿIsa), the penultimate prophet before Muhammad. She is exalted as the woman chosen “over all women of the world” (Qurʾan 3:42). Furthermore, the Mughals linked the virgin birth to that of Queen Alanqua, a mother figure of the Mongols to whom their ancestry was traced. The title Maryam was conferred on the mothers of Akbar and Jahangir, and the motif of Mary and Jesus provided a visual parallel to the queen mother and emperor in the Mughal royal lineage.

The combination of these factors helped elevate the Virgin Mary to a special place in Mughal painting during this period, as Mughal artists reinterpreted Marian imagery based on European prints and paintings, and presumably, they would have learned from visiting European painters such as the Portuguese artist of this painting.

Publication History

  • Milo Cleveland Beach and Stuart Cary Welch, The Grand Mogul: Imperial Painting in India, 1600-1660, exh. cat., Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute (Williamstown, MA, 1978), Page 51, 53, 56/Figure 9
  • "Women and Religion", The Colby Library Quarterly, Colby Library Associates (Waterville, Maine, 1989), vol. XXV, no. 3, back cover
  • Ellison Banks Findly, Religious Resources for Secular Power: The Case of Nur Jahan, Colby Library Quarterly, ed. Douglas Archibald, Vol. XXV, No. 3, September 1989, p. 146; back cover: ill.
  • Gauvin Alexander Bailey, The Jesuits and the Grand Mogul: Renaissance Art at the Imperial Court of India, 1580-1630, Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C., 1998), page 28/figure 19
  • 40 Years On... Donations by John Goelet: Sculpture, Paintings and Drawings, Miniatures and Calligraphy, Tankas and Mandala, M. T. Train and Scala Books (New York, NY, 2000), page 198, 244
  • Alan Chong, ed., Christianity in Asia: Sacred Art and Visual Splendour, Asian Civilisations Museum (Singapore, 2016), p. 77, fig. 7
  • Axel Langer, ed., In the Name of the Image: Figurative Representation in Islamic and Christian Cultures, Hatje Cantz (Berlin, 2022), cat. no. 120

Exhibition History

  • The Enlightened Eye: Gifts from John Goelet, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 02/12/2000 - 05/07/2000
  • The Sensuous and the Sublime: Representations of Love in the Arts of the Middle East and Southern Asia, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 07/07/2001 - 12/30/2001
  • Luxury for Export: A 17th-Century Indian Textile made for Portugal, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, 02/08/2008 - 05/04/2008
  • 32Q: 2400 French/Italian/Spanish, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 03/31/2025 - 07/17/2025
  • A Colloquium in the Visual Arts , Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 09/04/2021 - 01/02/2022

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Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art at am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu