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European Costume Scene

Unknown

1592

unspecified

From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art

Patna School of Painting Renaissance Renaissance Genre Scene

Dominant colour

European Costume Scene is a 1592 unspecified by Unknown, a Patna School of Painting work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.

Who painted this?: Unknown
When & what style?: 1592 · Patna School of Painting
Where can I see it?: Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

You see two European-style merchants in fancy clothes talking to a woman under a tent, while a holy man kneels and shows her a scroll. The artist was Indian, working for the Mughal court around 1600. He copied poses and clothes from European prints brought by Jesuit missionaries, but the distant city in the corner is pure Mughal—flat, patterned, no shadows. The mix makes the scene feel like a story no one wrote down. Look up more paintings tagged india, mughal dynasty (1526-1756) to see how Indian artists remade European pictures in their own way.

The story of this work

Overview

This painting of European subjects by an unnamed Indian artist depicts an unidentified scene in which two merchants approach a pavilion where a seated lady receives a kneeling holy man unrolling a scroll before her. The figures wear garments associated with different periods, which increases the painting’s ambiguity. The distant cityscape in the upper left corner is a Mughal version of the type introduced into India by Jesuit missionaries who brought gifts of European paintings and engravings.

Read the full account in the museum source.