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Your galleryA mendicant bowing before a holy man, from the Prince Salim Album
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Find the alms bowl on the ground that the seated animal stares at: Basavana signed it in tiny letters, the kind of virtuoso small work Persian connoisseurs praised.
By the 1580s, the Cleveland Museum of Art notes, Indian painters in Akbar’s workshop were joining Persian styles to the new depth and lifelike detail that Akbar favored, perhaps inspired by European prints and paintings. A devotee bows his head to the feet of a holy man in pale blue robes, and lines by the poet Hafiz above speak of falling at someone’s feet in hope of help. Basavana’s son Manohar painted a variation in which a holy man bows to a prince instead.
Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper · Page: 32.7 x 21.1 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art
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Details and source
- Museum title
- A mendicant bowing before a holy man, from the Prince Salim Album
- Artist
- Basavana (Indian, active c. 1560–1600)
- Date
- c. 1585; inner border added in Allahabad c. 1602; outer border added probably 1900s
- Medium
- Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
- Dimensions
- Page: 32.7 x 21.1 cm (12 7/8 x 8 5/16 in.); Painting: 13.6 x 7.5 cm (5 3/8 x 2 15/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Gift in honor of Madeline Neves Clapp; Gift of Mrs. Henry White Cannon by exchange; Bequest of Louise T. Cooper; Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund; From the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.