Portrait of a kneeling holy man, from the Prince Salim Album
Mir Sayyid Ali
1555–1565
- Medium
- Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper, laid down on an album page with cream borders decorated with gold flowers and geometric motifs
- Dimensions
- Painting: 12 x 7.1 cm (4 3/4 x 2 13/16 in.); Overall: 23.3 x 14.9 cm (9 3/16 x 5 7/8 in.)
- Genre
- Paintings
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Tags
Mughal India, court of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605)
About
The kneeling figure is a charlatan holy man who wears the blue robe of a Sufi mystic. According to the inscriptions above and below the painting, he acts humble and pious for monetary gain rather than sincerity of devotion. Images of charlatan holy men recur in Mughal painting, including in the Cleveland Tuti-Nama. Mir Sayyid Ali was the first head of the Mughal workshop under Akbar. He was responsible for training Indian artists to adopt Persian sensibilities, admired by elites of the Islamic world during the 1400s to at least the 1700s.