C. Venugopal Reddy
Fine Arts
July 2025
Miniature painting from India, especially that of the Mughal and Rajputana dynasty, has revealed the affluent artistic, cultural, and religious past of the period. The images and expressions of Rajput and Mughal art styles, all of which originated from themes identified with the religions of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam, were quite different. Mughal art works are mostly characterized by a secular and courtly style of realism and richness, compared to mysticism and spiritualism and popular cultural themes mostly used in Rajput art. The paper discusses contrast between the Rajput and Mughal miniature paintings, focusing on the use of differences in symbolic and stylistic elements used for representation of components such as water bodies, plants, trees, and heavenly attributes. It goes on a higher level in terms of a larger cultural conversation that could be witnessed between secularism and spirituality in the case of Indian court art. Indian court art in both its variations-the one of Persian aesthetic influence and local cultural influence-is therefore molded, giving evidence of an entirely different pattern to artistic development in the Indian history complex.
1- 11
© Airo Journals 2021
