Miniature pasted on an album leaf. ‘Lovers in a Landscape’

Like many Mughal artists, Mir Kalan Khan worked in a style that seems quite eclectic. The young, rather irresolute couple seems to be related to the people from Isfahan depicted some 150 years earlier by Riza-i Abbasi, while the more down-to-earth woman entertaining them by playing a long-necked lute is purely Indian. The trees on the right are European, while the indefinable yellow background is quite original – but also very strange.

The artist nonetheless succeeded in creating a painting in which the large plane tree and the foreground in particular – with a lively gathering of animals and birds – are able to bring together the different elements to form a captivating whole.