Varati Ragini, from the Chawand Ragamala

A couple sit together on a low seat inside a pavilion while a woman behind them holds a fly-whisk over their heads. Above the roofline a red cloth billows against a dark sky scattered with white stars. Two cages hang below the terrace. The colours are flat and loud: yellow, red, green, pink.

A ragamala is a set of pictures in which each raga or ragini, a musical mode, is shown as a scene with its own mood, season and hour. Varati is one of the raginis. A band of Devanagari text runs across the top of the page.

This page belongs to a series painted at Chawand by an artist named Nasiruddin and dated 1605. It is the first dated document of Mewar painting and one of the earliest dated Rajput works of any kind. Sahibdin, who led Mewar painting a generation later, is thought to have followed Nasiruddin’s manner and may have been related to him.