Open full image Pin

A traveler persuades Lorik to return home (top); Chanda objects (bottom), from a Chandayana (Story of Chanda)

Unknown

1540

unspecified

From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art

Mughal Painting Renaissance Renaissance Religious

Dominant colour

A traveler persuades Lorik to return home (top); Chanda objects (bottom), from a Chandayana (Story of Chanda) is a 1540 unspecified by Unknown, a Mughal Painting work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.

Who painted this?: Unknown
When & what style?: 1540 · Mughal Painting
Where can I see it?: Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

You see two stacked scenes: a man pleading with Lorik to come home, and a woman, Chanda, raising her hand in protest. This painting comes from a 1500s Indian love story called the *Chandayana*. The artists mixed Persian colors and fine vine patterns with flat, side-facing figures. The story itself is Sufi—a branch of Islam focused on divine love. The way the figures stand in separate, flat layers was common in Indian painting before the Mughals. To see more art like this, look up sultanate india.

The story of this work

Overview

Chanda is the heroine of a Sufi romance. The Sufis are a mystical branch of Islam whose followers cultivate love for the divine. This painting is from a dispersed manuscript of the Chandayana painted in a style that was an important source for Mughal painting. Its artists integrated Persian colors and delicate vine motifs with figures presented in profile, within flat, compartmentalized registers, which are horizontal divisions of space. The drama of their interactions is conveyed by means of animated gestures.

Read the full account in the museum source.