Virgin and Child with Angels (painting by a Portuguese artist), folio from the Gulshan Album; mounted with an ornamental border by a Mughal artist

This composition of the Virgin and Child, painted after a Flemish engraving by Antonius Wierix dated 1584, is attributed to an unnamed Portuguese artist brought by the Jesuit mission to the court of Mughal emperor Akbar in 1595. The Jesuits mistook the Mughals’ appetite for Christian iconography as an openness to convert to Catholicism, when in fact such images were exploited to articulate Akbar’s religious policy of “universal peace” (sulh-i kull) with all faiths. Mary (Maryam) is venerated by Muslims as well as Christians. An entire chapter in the Qurʾan is dedicated to her as the mother of Jesus (ʿIsa), the penultimate prophet before Muhammad. She is exalted as the woman chosen “over all women of the world” (Qurʾan 3:42). Furthermore, the Mughals linked the virgin birth to that of Queen Alanqua, a mother figure of the Mongols to whom their ancestry was traced. The title Maryam was conferred on the mothers of Akbar and Jahangir, and the motif of Mary and Jesus provided a visual parallel to the queen mother and emperor in the Mughal royal lineage. The combination of these factors helped elevate the Virgin Mary to a special place in Mughal painting during this period, as Mughal artists reinterpreted Marian imagery based on European prints and paintings, and presumably, they would have learned from visiting European painters such as the Portuguese artist of this painting.