A Lady with Flower and Fly Whisk

Date

c. 1630

Description

Creator of the image: Unknown
Date of the image creation: c. 1630
Medium: painting
Person depicted: unknown

This Islamic miniature, from seventeenth-century Mughal India is held by the David Collection, a museum of artworks in Copenhagen named after its founder Christian Ludvig David. The painting is 25×14 cm. According to the museum, ‘a specific genre that the Mughal artists developed to perfection in the seventeenth century was portraiture. There is an entire gallery of true-to-life depictions of men, from the Great Mughals themselves to their ministers and courtiers. Women were a different matter. Artists did not have access to Muslim harems, and the many depictions of women in Mughal miniatures are consequently idealized. This sensual rendition must thus be considered a personification of the period’s ideal of beauty. The clinging or partly transparent garments give us more than an intimation of the sweetness that could be found in the closed world of the harem.’

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