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Find the boy emperor on his gold throne under the green canopy, the standing regent Bairam Khan, and Shah Abu’l-Maali in red, seized on the carpet.
Akbar ordered the Akbarnama, an illustrated history of his reign, in 1589; while the court historian Abu’l Fazl wrote it, about fifty artists painted its pages. Here the thirteen-year-old emperor, three days after taking power, watches from a gold throne as a courtier who had been his late father’s favorite is seized for insolence. The red inscription in the lower margin credits Basawan with the design; he also painted the faces of Akbar, the regent Bairam Khan and the prisoner, and Shankar painted the rest.
Opaque watercolor and gold on paper · Image: 32 × 19.3 cm · Art Institute of Chicago
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Details and source
- Museum title
- The Young Emperor Akbar Arrests the Insolent Shah Abu’l-Maali, Page from a Manuscript of the Akbarnama
- Artist
- India Designed by Basawan, painted by Shankar
- Date
- Mughal dynasty (1526-1857), c. 1590-1595
- Medium
- Opaque watercolor and gold on paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 32 × 19.3 cm (12 5/8 × 7 9/16 in.); Outermost border: 33 × 19.6 cm (13 × 7 11/16 in.); Page: 34.4 × 20 cm (13 1/2 × 7 7/8 in.)
- Credit line
- Lucy Maud Buckingham Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.