Preface
The sequence of pictures, which is here reproduced in its entirety for the first time, comprises some of the earliest Indian paintings ever to have reached this country. As such they have a special interest as important landmarks in our cultural connections. Their significance, however, goes considerably further, for in style they reveal a tradition of painting, which, if strongly influenced by the Mughals, is none the less un-Mughal in character. They thus provide important evidence of the state of Indian painting, in the early seventeenth century, in centres other than the Mughal capital. Finally, their subject matter introduces us, at an early period, to a form of expression which in its close association of poetry, music and painting is one of the most significant contributions India has made to art. To explain these special characteristics is the primary concern of Mr. Stooke to whom the credit must go for conceiving and planning this book. His work has been brilliantly supplemented by Mr. Khandalavala who brings the latest Indian research to bear on the problem of the pictures' dating and provenance.
About The Book
The Laud Ragamala Album, Bikaner, and the Sociability of Subimperial Painting is a tale of two present-day "Indiana Joneses" art historian Professor Molly Emma Aitken and Connoisseur Shanane Davis who made an extraordinary discovery regarding the most famous Indian muraqqa (album book with miniature paintings and calligraphy) found in a European collection. In 1639, The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, or now believed could have been the English courtier, diplomat, and state-sponsored pirate, Sir Kenelem Digby, gave a muraqqa composed of poetry and paintings from early 17th Century India to the new Bodleian Library (one of the oldest libraries now in Europe patronized by Sir Thomas Bodley and opened to scholars in 1602). The extraordinary Laud Ragamala became a holy grail of sorts for Indian art history studies.
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