The beautiful Indian woman depicted in the guise of a composite European allegorical figure in this elegant tinted brush drawing was made by Mughal master Basawan (fl. 1580-1600). Basawan was the greatest painter at the court of Emperor Akbar I (r. 1556-1605), where he and the other artists in the imperial workshop were encouraged to take up Christian themes, techniques and iconography in their oeuvres. Basawan was the most successful artist in this respect and he is included in the Akbarnama, an account of the reign of Emperor Akbar I by the Mughal historian and grand vizier Abu'l Fazl (1551-1602), where he is listed as one of the leading artists working in the atelier. Basawan contributed to a number of important, lavish courtly manuscripts commissioned for Akbar, including the Tutinama of 1560-65, the Razmnama of 1582-86, the Timurnama of 1584, the Ramayana of 1588, and the Akbarnama of 1590. In addition to these significant contributions to the imperial manuscript production, Basawan was a skilled portraitist know for his fluid assimilation of European naturalism and forms. In particular, he is celebrated for the development and use of the nim-qalam brush drawing technique in a group of works that emulate European engravings and grisaille techniques. Basawan reached his apogee as a painter around 1585-90, when this enigmatic drawing of a beautiful woman was rendered using the same nim-galam brush-drawing technique. The drawing, which was re-mounted, tinted and gilded later in its history, giving it the present devotional aspect, draws on multiple European print sources. It is one of a small group of only five known allegorical brush drawings made by Basawan in this style, four of which are in the collection of the Musee Guimet, Paris (see Okada, 1991, figs. 6-9).
This drawing of a beautiful woman depicted in three-quarters profile probably draws on multiple European print sources, which were in circulation at the Mughal court after arriving in the hands of Jesuit missionaries, diplomats, and travellers. Here, the female figure holds an open book in front of her chest with one hand, while the middle finger of the other hand marks her place in the same text. She wears a diaphanous, ruffled dress through which her breasts are visible, and an elaborate headdress set with jewels is topped with a plume. She has the elegant modelled facial features of a classical Indian beauty, with an elongated nose, almond-shaped eyes, strong brows, and a lock of hair escaping from her headdress. Along with the golden bangles that decorate her wrists, these elements mark the work out as the portrait of an enigmatic Indian woman in the pose and costume of a European allegorical figure. The portrait was probably cropped out of a larger composition, so it is impossible to know its original context. The European sources for this portrait include the allegorical figure of Pietas Regia, the female representation of the piety of Philip Il of Spain as protector of the Catholic faith, which appears on the second title page to Christophe Plantin's 'Royal Polyglot Bible' (fig. 1). The Polyglot Bible, which was commissioned by Philip Il and printed by Plantin in Antwerp c. 1568-72, was presented at the court of Akbar by Jesuit missionaries on 5 March 1580. Like the woman in our drawing, the Pietas Regia figure holds an open book before her bared breasts and wears a loose, classicizing dress with puffed sleeves and a plumed headdress.
Basawan used the Pietas Regia figure as a source for a number of his mysterious depictions of female figures, including four drawings in the Musée Guimet, Paris, and one in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (see fig. 2; Okada 1991, figs. 9-11;
Okada 1992, figs. 85, 89, 90; Pal 1993, no. 54). The costume and face of the figure in our drawing, with dimpled cheek, small, pursed mouth and long pointed nose is almost identical, though in reverse, to that of the drawing in the Musée Guimet of a woman standing on a monster's head (see fig. 3; see Okada 1991, no. 11; Okada 1992, fig. 90; also reproduced in Seyller 2011, fig. 9). The repetition of the facial figures in these two drawings offers up the tantalising possibility that the drawing is a portrait of a woman, possibly a royal member of Akbar's court, who is depicted by Basawan in the guise of a European allegorical figure.
Other print sources for this drawing include sixteenth-century European engravings of the Annunciation, where the Virgin is almost always depicted holding her place in the Bible as she receives the Archangel Gabriel in her rooms. In Hendrick Goltzius' widely circulated Annunciation of 1594 (fig. 4), the Virgin holds her place in the Bible with two fingers, the other hand raised to her chest. The hand gesture of the figure in our portrait, as she holds her place in the book in her lap with three spread fingers, suggests that Basawan was familiar with the iconography of the Annunciation from print sources. Yet, despite obvious references to the iconography of the Virgin in this portrait, the classicising, immodest dress of our figure relates her more closely European prints and engravings of Old Testament female figures and warrior saints.
The style sported by our figure, with high belt and diaphanous chemise emphasising her visible breasts, short puffed and pleated sleeves, and elaborate plumed headdress, recall European prints of Judith and Lucretia, who are often depicted bare-breasted or partially nude, in similar, classicising styles (figs. 5). Other classicising depictions of female figures that would have been circulating in print form at the Mughal courts include the aforementioned image of the Pietas Regia, as well as series of the Seven.
Liberal Arts (see, for example, St Eufemia reading a book in the British Museum, London, inv. inv. 1871,0429.463). Series like Goltzius' Christ, the Apostles and St. Paul with the Creed of c. 1589, depicting pensive half-figure portraits of the Apostles with the Bible, may also have served as iconographic source material.
Many versions of European images were available to and adapted by Mughal artists, but none assimilated these exotic forms so successfully into their oeuvres as Basawan. Both the gold border and halo around our figure's head were added later, probably at the same time as a related miniature by Manohar (fl. c. 1582-1624) was remounted and laid down in the same manner (fig. 6). Manohar was the son of Basawan and an accomplished Mughal court painter in his own right. Now in the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge MA, Manohar's portrait of a Madonna was also removed from a larger work and repurposed in the format of an icon, with the addition of a gold border and halo. It is likely that the two portraits were re-mounted together, at which time they were also given devotional significance. The history of remounting further emphasises the composite nature of our image and its multiple points of reference, both at the time of its making and in the course of its later reception. A dynamic and enigmatic portrait of a beautiful female figure, this image adapts and assimilates European allegorical and devotional imagery for use in the realm of Mughal portraiture and imperial imagery.