In the Realm of Gods and Kings: Arts of India Selections from the Polsky Collections and The Metropolitan Museum of Art Asia Society
The Hunt Court Life Kings, Courtiers, and Women Courtly Manuscripts The Realm of Gods
Sultan ‘Abdallah Qutb Shah in procession, Detail
Golconda, Deccan; 1635–40
Opaque watercolor and gold on paper
Cynthia Hazen Polsky Collection (2040-IP)

The Realm of Kings

Most surviving early Indian art is religious in inspiration, and much of it was commissioned by kings. Commissions were often initiated by a rulers’ devotion to particular deities. With the arrival of the great Muslim emperors (the Mughals), the predominance in art of religious ideas and objects was diminished. During the time of the early Mughal emperors in the late sixteenth to early seventeenth century, artists began to create remarkable works based on careful and sensitive observations of human, animal, and plant life. This revolutionary pursuit of naturalism, rather than idealized portraiture and court reportage, was imitated and modified at most Indian courts. While this approach also appealed to the Hindu Rajput rulers, their painters placed more emphasis on idealized images of life.

Together with sumptuous techniques in the decorative arts, Indian paintings provide a rich record of royal life in all its guises from the sixteenth until the late nineteenth century. Eventually, Western pictorial influences and the novel art of photography prevailed, and traditional paintings were relegated to secondary status.