Open full image Pin

A floral fantasy of animals and birds (Waq-waq)

Unknown

1604

unspecified

From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art

Baroque Mughal Painting Baroque Allegory

Dominant colour

A floral fantasy of animals and birds (Waq-waq) is a 1604 unspecified by Unknown, a Baroque work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.

Who painted this?: Unknown
When & what style?: 1604 · Baroque
Where can I see it?: Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

You see a wild plant sprouting elephants, birds, and strange beasts—all tangled together. This painting comes from Mughal India, where artists filled royal albums with playful puzzles. The elephant eats the very branch it grows from, while an ibex nibbles the stem below. It’s like a visual joke meant for sharp-eyed courtiers. To see more of these clever, dreamlike scenes, look up Mughal India.

The story of this work

Overview

A magical plant simultaneously brings forth and eats animal life in multiple forms. Playfully rendered, real and mythic creatures ripen on the vine. All stems issue from the elephant, who is about to eat the main branch, while he, in turn, emerges from one that is about to be cut by the teeth of an ibex at the lower right. This painting would have beguiled courtly connoisseurs who enjoyed discovering visual puns in a royal album. Learned viewers would note that an animal-bearing plant recalls medieval Persian stories about the mythical island of Waq-waq, inhabited by half-plant/half-animal…