Walters Ms. W.685, Single leaf of elephants on a river bank

W.685

Single leaf of elephants on a river bank

This Mughal painting dates to the late tenth century AH / sixteenth CE or the early eleventh century AH / seventeenth CE. It depicts elephants on the bank of a river in a rocky landscape with a fortified city in the background. It appears that the wild elephants are being captured with a view to taming them. The figures in grisaille and the architectural vignettes in the background represent early contacts between Mughal India and Europe. The painting has a brown border with illuminated flora and fauna motifs.

Late 10th century AH / 16th CE to early 11th century AH / 17th CE

India

Leaf

Historical

The primary language in this manuscript is Persian.

Paper

Mounted on a leaf with a Persian text in verse in four columns

Foliation: Not applicable

21.0 cm wide by 33.5 cm high

1. Image: 12.7 cm wide by 21.2 cm high

1. Title: Elephants on a river bank
2. Hand note: Written in black nastaʿlīq script
3. Decoration note: Brown border with illuminated floral and fauna motifs

fol. W.685a:

1. 
2. Title: Elephants on a river bank
3. Form: Painting
4. Label: This Mughal painting dates to the late tenth century AH / sixteenth CE or the early eleventh century AH / seventeenth CE. It depicts elephants on the bank of a river in a rocky landscape with a fortified city in the background. It appears that the wild elephants are being captured with a view to taming them. The figures in grisaille and the architectural vignettes in the background represent early contacts between Mughal India and Europe. The painting has a brown border with illuminated flora and fauna motifs.

fol. W.685b:

1. 
2. Title: Text page
3. Form: Text page

Walters Art Museum, 1931, by Henry Walters bequest

Principal cataloger: Gacek, Adam

Catalogers: Landau, Amy; Smith, Sita

Editor: Bockrath, Diane

Conservators: Jewell, Stephanie; Quandt, Abigail

Contributors: Barrera, Christina; Emery, Doug; Herbert, Lynley; Noel, William; Simpson, Shreve; Tabritha, Ariel; Toth, Michael B.; Valle, Chiara

The Walters Art Museum

Licensed for use under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Access Rights, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/legalcode. It is requested that copies of any published articles based on the information in this data set be sent to the curator of manuscripts, The Walters Art Museum, 600 North Charles Street, Baltimore MD 21201.