Analysis of Western Christian Influence on Moghul Muslim Art - Essay Example

Manohar: A Critical Analysis of Western Christian Influence on Moghul Muslim Art European visitors to the palaces and tombs of the Mughal Emperors (1526-1707) in the last decades of the 16th and the first decades of the 17th century were astonished to find them prominently adorned with mural paintings depicting Christ, the Virgin Mary and Christian saints executed in the style of the Catholic Late Renaissance. They also discovered Mughal artists at work on large numbers of miniature paintings, exquisite jewellery, and sculptures of the same subjects for their royal masters, including many in which the saintly figures bore a distinct aura of devotion.1 Their wonderment led to false reports of the imminent conversion of the Muslim Emperors Akbar (1556-1605) and Jahangir (1605-27). Modern scholars have also tended to misinterpret these images, either as a sign of Mughal cultural capitulation to the West, or as a brief and superficial fad for exotica. Both views misunderstand the Emperors' intentions and underestimate their learning and shrewdness. The Mughals consciously appropriated Euro-Christian art as a vehicle for their message of universal supremacy and divinity. Indeed, the Mughal saints' pictures did not simply serve an aesthetic function, but played a vital role in the culture of the Mughal court.2 The Emperors and their artists took on Catholic art because they were intrigued by its affinities with Islamic, Mongol, Hindu, and especially Sufi symbols and themes, and entranced by its realism and spiritual energy. In the foregoing analysis, focusing on Manohar's art, the Western European influence on the Moghul Muslim artistic genre will be highlighted and its implications investigated. Manohar began his career in the 1580s, but only developed a style truly his own by the 1590s.3 Manohar spent the 80s and early 90s collaborating with his father, Basawan,4 on manuscript illustrations, and also imitated his works in the European style. More so than Basawan, Manohar came to appreciate European paintings and engravings, and by the advent of the third Jesuit mission in 1595 he appears to have succeeded Kesu Das as Akbar's chief specialist in Christian art. He later used his skills in pictorial realism to serve Jahangir as one of his principal portraitists. Manohar's early work, likely produced around 1590, after the court had moved to Lahore (1585), does not yet exhibit the love for crowded scenes and pageantry which characterized his work from the mid-l590s.5 Distinct from his father's style and that of the earlier Moghul painters, is a tendency toward crisp, hard outlines and a more linear treatment of modelling, with less interest in spatial depth.6 His drawings have a very finished, burnished appearance characterised by a reticent elegance. When comparing Manohar's paintings with those of his father and other earlier Moghul painters such as Kesu Das, one finds that even though their influence is apparent, there are evident differences. Differences, for example, are clear in Manohar's version of Basawan' s Jerusalem drawing, in Tehran.7 Here, Manohar has copied the earlier work [Fig. 62] with extreme precision, and has even worked out the problem of drapery more logically than his father, but it feels colder. The figure on the left, adapted from Basawan's Guimet 3619.J.a., is also given a more solid, finished appearance than its model-the artist has combed her hair and trimmed her weeds. Another work in a similar vein, although also betraying the influence of Kesu Das, is a high-quality painting in Boston depicting a Basawan-style woman enthroned in a palace interior with an attendant.8 Like many of the scenes of courtly life, this picture places the women in a pavilion reminiscent of Kesu Das' St. Matthew [Fig. 42]. The parted red curtain, shaded in the subtler manner of Manohar, reveals the usual "mystical chapel," complete with altar, chalice, and a censer or vigil light. Typically, Manohar has closed off the landscape with a wall, narrowing the depth of the scene.9 The central figure is depicted as a melancholy lover, staring despondently at the floor. Another painting combines the Kesu Das idiom with figures taken directly from an engraving.10 The principal figures in the Virgin and the Child With Attendant, come from the Nativity by Jerome Wierix (1573), but Manohar places them in front of a pavilion in the middle ground and a far-off landscape. St. Joseph has been replaced by a female attendant, and the usual furry cat, dishes, vases and ewer are added to the foreground and interior of the pavilion. The artist again reveals the entrance to the mystical chapel by an open curtain, and beyond we can see a table or altar upon which he has placed dishes resembling liturgical vessels, including a chalice and paten. The figures are identified as Mary and Jesus. Manohar also made several other studies from original European material which may date from this early period, since the originals predate the third Jesuit mission. Manohar was especially fond of the Borghese Madonna, whom he features in an exquisite study in Paris.11 Here Manohar tilts the head slightly forward and encloses the child completely in her arms to give her a warmer, more motherly aura than the stiff, pseudo-Byzantine original. The folds of her veil, which were also popular in the scenes of courtly life, are treated here with the utmost delicacy. Other versions of this same Madonna which are probably also by Manohar, are found in the St. Petersburg Album.12 One is nearly identical to the original, retaining its pose and the fall of the drapery, while the other, is simply a bust portrait, without child, in prayer. In both cases, and in several copies by other hands,13 the artist has added a brilliant halo in gold. Another miniature depicts a Madonna (this time probably taken from the Wierix print kneeling in prayer before an altar with a crucifix, which is rendered in convincing three-quarters view. Manohar used figures gleaned from other sources to populate scenes of his own invention. In a drawing in the Gulshan album, Manohar creates a scene of family life under the influence not only of his elders but also the scenes of courtly life, in which Pietas as musician sits on a throne playing a stringed instrument for a naked young man while the Borghese Madonna swoons behind the canopy and a baby tries to attract attention.14 Here, however, there is evidence that Manohar returned to the original engravings for additional inspiration; the pose of the seated figure, and especially the treatment of her breasts, point toward Pencz' s Geometria.15 Reminiscent of Kesu Das' "Madonna with drinking party," this exercise by the young artist is a freer experiment in European figural types and composition than his earlier Occidentalist works. A similar character-study, this time depicting a Hindu subject, uses a variety of European-style women that are inspired by Basawan and probably also the Borghese Madonna, especially the central praying figure.16 This drawing appears to have a fragmentary signature by the artist in the lower left and its association with Manohar is strengthened by the treatment of the leaves and bark of the tree, which is close to other miniatures by him in a Khamsa of Nizami.17 In the same vein is a transitional work whose crowded, busy scene and smaller figures point toward Manohar's later paintings. It depicts the Virgin Mary, identified by a halo, seated on a reclining chair.18 The Virgin, regal and queen-like on her throne, is anointed and attended by legions of harem women while she distractedly says her rosary. Food is being prepared, incense is offered, a cat languishes at her feet, and rows of golden vessels are arranged on tables below. The canopy is a lavish riot of colour and arabesque. At the lower left, a wet nurse dandles the infant Jesus. In this splendid drapery study, each woman seems to wear a different variation of the Classical gown. This adaptation of Christian figures further reveals the Mughal interest in the late-Akbar period for mystical women and familial, harem settings. In the later 1590s, Manohar moved away from his single figure drawings to demonstrate his skill at painting crowded, animated Christian scenes full of colour and pageantry. One of his last works in the old manner of Basawan and the earlier Moghul artists, is a nim-qalam portrait of a Jesuit father, whose depiction of clerical costume is accurate enough that we can assume he had before him a portrait of Ignatius Loyola.19 If the model was the portrait sent from Japan in 1598, then that may indicate the date of this drawing, since it must have been one of the very earliest representations of the Jesuit founder.20 It is less likely that Manohar painted one of the fathers from life, since its pose is consistent with that found on engraved portraits. Manohar adds some Basawan elements, such as the dish and the lapdog. The subtle "S"-shaped pose of the priest and the almost calligraphic treatment of the priest's gown, shows that the artist has introduced traditional Persian elements in this Occidental study. The elegant and finely drawn face, beard, and hands betray the brush of a master. Manohar's newer, more flamboyant Occidentalist style is represented by a magnificent full-page miniature depicting the Last Judgement.21 Executed in collaboration with Nanha, this picture does not follow the print figure for figure, but only uses the composition and poses of the original as a guide. Manohar has inserted figures from other paintings, for example his Madonna after Wierix which he has placed to the left of Christ. The painting is based on two versions of the Last Judgement in Nadal's book, but it is reduced and simplified; the result, with less figures on a larger scale and a less expansive background, is better integrated and more human than the Wierix original.22 From Nadal, they adapt the figure of the naked man at lower left seen from behind with his right arm raised and a toga draped around his waist, as well as the souls marching off to Hell in the background and the group of angels in the centre, top. Plate 99 provided the inspiration for the pose of Jesus and the souls floating in mid-air between Heaven and Hell. Other features are shared by both, for example the rows of putti, the rainbow, and the billowing clouds. The fine drawing of a skeleton on the lower right is probably an invention. This is a masterful union of two complex images seen through the filter of Manohar's and Nanha's sense of proportion and composition. Its strict theological accuracy (for example the placement of Christ, Mary and St. John the Baptist), suggest that it was prepared in consultation with the fathers. Another painting, closely related to this in many respects, is probably also by the team of Manohar and Nanha. Depicting the Descent from the Cross, it is based primarily on an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi after a lost painting of Raphael (c.1480-c.1534), or more likely, as Skelton suggests, a late 16th century Flemish copy.23 Reversed, the image retains all of the figures of the engraving, but they are clothed and draped in a manner typical of Manohar. For example, the outer cloak of the woman supporting the Virgin's shoulders is echoed in John the Baptist's rags in the Last Judgement and his Tehran Musician; and the way in which the outer robe exposes the right shoulder of the Virgin and the angel to the left is also repeated elsewhere, for example the Nativity after Wierix and the scene before the Hindu shrine, the latter also sharing the figure of the praying woman to the left wearing a tiara. The background and heavenly clouds with trumpeting angels and putti are borrowed from the Last Judgement, which was probably painted first. Again we see the nude man seen from behind, the corpse in the shroud, and the group of naked figures climbing out of a pit (all reversed). In a whimsical touch, two Basawan dogs vie for Golgotha's bones. Again, there is nothing in it that would be deemed offensive to Christians, although the combination of the Descent from the Cross with the Last Judgement is unorthodox. Guy and Swallow claim that this is the very Descent from the Cross that Xavier saw being painted under Salim's supervision in 1598.24 The original Latin strongly suggests, however, that the artist was just colouring an engraving. As evidenced in the preceding discussion, Christian subjects were popular in Mughal painting. While some art historians have argued that the stated was inspired by both Muslim belief in leading Old and New Testament figures and the correlation between Catholicism and Sufism, others have insisted that inspiration was drawn from the beauty of the art itself and the Moghul artists' conviction that they could both improve and expand upon this particular body of paintings. It is, thus, that Manohar's art must be regarded, as was done in the preceding, from within the context of both the genre itself and the European paintings which inspired Manohar and which Manohar, in turn, sought to expand upon and redefine. Read More

 

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