Portrait of a great man : The Tribune India

Join Whatsapp Channel

’Art & Soul

Portrait of a great man

An unostentatious sketch of Akbar brings us close to the man.



An unostentatious sketch of Akbar brings us close to the man. In it, the emperor is seen divested of all signs of royalty, all the glamour that goes with power

B. N. Goswamy

 
B.N.Goswamy

Consider this rather moving passage. Emperor Jahangir wrote it almost at the beginning of his memoir, the Tuzuk-i Jahangiri as it is called. In this, he sets out to describe his father, Akbar, whom — one needs to recall — he had rebelled against, setting up a parallel court at Allahabad, a few short years before the great man died.

In his august appearance”, the passage runs, “he (Akbar) was of middle height, inclining to be tall. He was of the hue of wheat; his eyes and eyebrows were black, and his complexion dark than fair; he was lion-bodied, with a broad chest, and his hands and arms long. On the left side of his nose, he had a fleshy mole, very agreeable in appearance, of the size of half a pea. Those skilled in the science of physiognomy considered this mole a sign of great prosperity and exceeding good fortune. His august voice was very loud and, in speaking and explaining, had a peculiar richness.” He concludes with these words: “In his actions and movements, he was not like the people of the world, and the glory of God manifested in him”.

The passage can be read in different ways. It can be seen as a once recalcitrant, now subdued, son’s guilt-tinged tribute to his father. In respect of portraiture, it can be seen as a sharp and sensitive description even though it relies partly upon the ‘science of physiognomy’ in which the signs of a great leader of men — long hands and arms; fleshy mole close to the nose, and the like — were conventionally laid emphasis upon. But it can also be cited as a passage that is an exception to the general ‘rule’ that prevailed in those times of delineating only in the most flattering idealised terms royalty or someone infinitely superior and high of rank. Typical of that description is how Abu’l Fazl — that tireless and eloquent chronicler — who was commissioned by Emperor Akbar “to write with the pen of sincerity the account of the glorious events and of our dominion-increasing victories” — spoke of his imperial master every time he set out to do that.

Royalty, “that light emanating from God, and a ray from the sun”, he would write at one point, “sat naturally on him, and the qualities that should mark a great king — ‘a paternal love towards the subjects’, ‘a large heart’, ‘a daily increasing trust in God’, and ‘prayer and devotion’ — were all his”. In chapter after chapter dealing even with the relatively dry accounts of administrative matters, the chronicler could not help opening his account without saying something of the emperor’s brilliance of mind and about his vision for the land. However, in respect of portraiture, a real likeness, one does not gain from Abu’l Fazl’s encomia, any idea of what the great emperor might have looked like. He always remains an abstraction, as “Jalal-ud Din-i Muhammad”: ‘Shining Glory of the Faith of the Prophet’.

One turns naturally to paintings of the period for ‘seeing’ the emperor if one wishes to. And of these, there is no dearth. Other isolated folio apart, a whole series based on the Akbarnama — Abu’l Fazl’s biographical account — was painted by artists of the imperial atelier. In the leaves of that wonderful series, one sees Akbar again and again: now engaged in the qamargha hunt of wild animals, now riding recklessly on the back of a rogue elephant, now receiving the homage of the citizenry of Surat, now leading his forces that have laid siege to a great Rajput fort, now having a mystical experience during a hunting expedition. And so on. But one always sees him from a distance, and almost always in the midst of a great many people. What is more: there is no warmth, no sense of intimacy in them, everything being bathed in an official aura as it were. A portrait taken from up close rarely shows up. The nearest one can think of is a posthumous portrait of his, which Jahangir, with all emphasis trained upon his own magnificent apparel, holds in one hand to gaze upon.

However, there is one portrait, just an informal, completely unostentatious sketch that brings us close to the man: certainly closer than any of those formal renderings. In it — almost certainly a leaf from an artist’s sketch-book, considering that on the same leaf towards the very top an unfinished head of a woman has also been essayed — the emperor is seen divested of all signs of royalty, all the glamour that goes with power. We see instead a simple man: casually dressed with an adapt turban on his head, lost in thought, gaze gently directed downwards, eyes almost closed. It is a noble head, moving because of the honesty with which it is rendered. The qualities of a great king that Abu’l Fazl had listed – ‘a paternal love towards the subjects’, ‘a large heart’, a daily increasing trust in God’, and ‘prayer and devotion’ — are all here, one senses. This is a man to whom the humblest of men of the realm could have related.

One has no idea of who the painter of this wonderful, affectionate, sketch was. In fact one knows nothing else about it, and questions come to mind. For instance, was this portrait commissioned? Did the emperor sit for it, if he truly sat for any portrait of his at all? It appears most unlikely. Painters of great talent, and certainly among them those high in favour at the court, must have had the opportunity to see the emperor from close, but it is not easily conceivable that any portrait sessions, like those in the West, were held, with the emperor sitting for the painter day after day. One is in the area of speculation, but almost certainly, it seems, the painter of this affecting portrait must have seen the emperor several times, but here he is recollecting, not constructing, an image.

Top News

Cash-strapped Congress gets fresh IT notice of Rs 1,700 crore, say party insiders

Cash-strapped Congress gets fresh I-T notice of Rs 1,700 crore, say party insiders

The Congress is already facing a funds crunch after Income T...

Arvind Kejriwal's wife releases WhatsApp number for people to send messages for jailed AAP leader

Arvind Kejriwal's wife launches WhatsApp campaign to garner support for AAP leader

In a digital media briefing, Sunita says her husband has cha...

High alert across Uttar Pradesh after gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari's death

High alert across Uttar Pradesh after gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari's death

Umar Ansari alleged that his father was subjected to slow po...

Mukhtar Ansari was subjected to slow poisoning in jail: Son

Mukhtar Ansari was subjected to slow poisoning in jail: Son

Ansari's post-mortem to be conducted in UP by panel of five ...


Cities

View All