Persian and Chaghatay Turkish calligraphy by Mir `Ali (recto), youth with swans and rabbits, by `Abd al-Karim (verso), folio from the Minto Album

Persian and Chaghatay Turkish calligraphy by Mir `Ali (recto), youth with swans and rabbits, by `Abd al-Karim (verso), folio from the Minto Album. A young man stands in a complex landscape setting, holding up a book. Two swans and two collared rabbits are by his feet. Behind him in the rocky landscape are domed buildings, a shepherd and flock, and a red-sailed ship approached by a small boat. Inscribed (not signed) as "the work of the Wonder of the Age, master `Abd al-Karim", the painting was probably produced in the Deccani sultanate of Ibrahim `Adil Shah II (r. 1579-1627). Painted in a different tone to Mughal works, Deccani paintings were known and admired in Mughal contexts, and artworks were sent as diplomatic gifts. For example when Ibrahim's daughter married Jahangir's brother Daniyal in 1601, 2,000 volumes were sent from Bijapur to the Mughal court. The "Minto Album" refers to a set of forty album pages, now in the collections of the Chester Beatty and the Victoria and Albert Museum (London). Together with two other known sets of album pages (the "Wantage Album" also in the V&A, and the "Kevorkian Album" in the Metropolitan Museum (New York) and the Freer-Sackler Museum (Washington, DC)), these dispersed folios were originally part of several imperial Mughal Indian albums, owned by Jahangir (r. 1605-1627) and his son Shah Jahan (r. 1628-1658). The exact reconstruction (and even the number) of those original court albums is much complicated by later reformatting of the folios and their contents, rearranged into new groups, and with works re-set among later additions in new albums. As a broad group, these Mughal albums represent an extraordinary art collection: contemporary portraits of rulers, officials, soldiers and holy men, private scenes of palace life, and animal studies, contrasted with a more consistent series of older Persian calligraphic works by the renowned Mir `Ali Haravi (d. 1544), re-framed in new Mughal surroundings. His large, signed "exhibition piece" calligraphy lines were produced as standalone quotations; much smaller lines of calligraphy were cut from small-format "safina" books of poetry, and arranged as border elements throughout the albums. The works were also planned in pairs, to face one another on a page-opening, in a carefully curated layout. Images faced images, and calligraphy faced calligraphy. Both rulers added their notes and commentary to many of the images, identifying painters or commenting on the sitter of a portrait. Most dramatically, all of these works on paper are mounted in decorated album pages, which follow distinct design programmes throughout the albums. Informed by European botanical print illustrations, these may depict flowering plant specimens and flying insects, painted in gold against dark blue or cream backgrounds, or in bright colour, gold-outlined against cream paper. More stylised border designs drawing from Iran organise leafy floral stems in spiralling scrollwork, ordered trellis or pinned among palmette strapwork and lobed medallions, against cream or dark blue grounds. These different border modes are dateable, as they follow shifts in Mughal taste under Jahangir (for the gold-painted plants on deep blue or cream), and Shah Jahan (for the orderly colourful plants on cream ground). Visually, these borders hold the album sequence together, with their designs of great vivacity. Folio, ink, colours and gold on paper, mounted on album page with gold-outlined floral borders, Persian and Chaghatay Turkish calligraphy signed Mir `Ali ("al-faqir `Ali) (recto), youth with swans and rabbits, inscribed `Abd al-Karim ("kar-e Nadir al-`Asr, `Abd al-Karim") (verso), from the Minto Album, calligraphy possibly Bukhara (Uzbekistan), c. 1505-45, painting Bijapur, c. 1600-15, album page Agra, India, c. 1630-40.