Late 16th to mid 17th century, with a revival in the 18th century centred on Hyderabad · The Deccan sultanates: Bijapur, Golconda, Ahmadnagar, Bidar and Berar
Deccani painting
Painting from the Muslim sultanates of the Deccan, made at the same time as early Mughal painting but in a different mood. Where the Mughals wanted likeness, the Deccan wanted colour, luxury and a touch of the dreamlike.
How to recognise it
- Brilliant colour and a feeling of luxury
- Faces in three-quarter view rather than profile
- Tall women with small heads, wearing saris
- Buildings drawn as flat, screen-like panels
- Few signatures, dates or inscriptions
When the Bahmani Sultanate broke apart, by 1520, its successor states each kept a court, and each court kept painters. Their rulers, many of them Shia, had their own ties to Persia. Trade in textiles and nearby Goa brought European images. After the sultans sacked Hampi, the Vijayanagara capital, in 1565, Hindu artists seem to have moved north to work for them.
Among the earliest surviving pictures are twelve illustrations to the Tarif-i Husain Shahi, a poem on the life of Hussain Nizam Shah I of Ahmadnagar, commissioned by his widow while she ruled as regent in about 1565 to 1569. Six show the queen beside her husband, which is very rare in India. When her son rebelled and imprisoned her in 1569, most of her portraits were scratched out or painted over. Bijapur’s Nujum-ul-Ulum, an encyclopaedia of the stars of 1570 to 1571, now in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, has hundreds of illustrations. Ragamala sets, which paint the mood of musical modes, seem to have begun in the Deccan.
Ibrahim Adil Shah II of Bijapur, himself a painter, was among the great patrons, and the Persian painter Farrukh Beg spent years at his court. Painting suffered as the Mughals advanced, and much of it had turned sub-Mughal by about 1650. The fall of the last two sultanates, Bijapur and Golconda, in 1687 was the decisive blow; most of both royal collections were destroyed in the conquest.
What to look for
Mood more than likeness: princes dozing under trees, ladies with birds, gold and deep colour. Names are scarce and survivals are rare. Deccani work has been mistaken for Rajasthani before; one set was only placed when a manuscript in the same style turned up, inscribed as painted at Aurangabad in 1650.
