Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

Ashmolean − Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

Room 33 | Mughal India 1500-1900 gallery

Discover the paintings and decorative arts of the Mughal period - the most powerful and lasting of the Islamic dynasties in India.

Mughal India gallery

Galleries : 132 objects

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Mihrdukht aims her arrow at the ring

  • loan
  • Description

    The story-tellers’ epic of the hero Amir Hamza was a favourite of the young emperor Akbar. Early in his reign he commissioned a series of 1400 large scale illustrations, which took his painting studio 15 years to complete. In this tale the beautiful Mihrdukht, a brilliant archer, repels her unwanted suitors by challenging them to shoot an arrow through a ring held in the beak of a golden bird at the top of a tall tower. Here she effortlessly demonstrates this feat.

  • Details

    Associated place
    AsiaIndia north India (place of creation)
    Date
    c. 1570
    Mughal Period (1526 - 1858)
    Associated people
    Akbar (ruled 1556 - 1605) (commissioner)
    Material and technique
    gouache with gold on cotton cloth
    Dimensions
    frame 83.5 x 67.5 x 3 cm (height x width x depth)
    painting 67.8 x 52 cm (height x width)
    Material index
    organicvegetalfibre cotton,
    Technique index
    Object type index
    No. of items
    1
    Credit line
    Lent by Howard Hodgkin.
    Accession no.
    LI118.1
  • Further reading

    Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2nd February-22nd April 2012, Visions of Mughal India: The Collection of Howard Hodgkin, Andrew Topsfield, ed. (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2012), no. 1 on p. 24, pp. 15, 17, 24, 26, 28, 30, 34, & 273, illus. p. 25

Past Exhibition

see (1)

Location

    • Returned to lender

Objects are sometimes moved to a different location. Our object location data is usually updated on a monthly basis. Contact the Jameel Study Centre if you are planning to visit the museum to see a particular object on display, or would like to arrange an appointment to see an object in our reserve collections.

 

Notice

Objects may have since been removed or replaced from a gallery. Click into an individual object record to confirm whether or not an object is currently on display. Our object location data is usually updated on a monthly basis, so contact the Jameel Study Centre if you are planning to visit the museum to see a particular Eastern Art object.

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