An Illustrated and Illuminated Album Page: Emperor Akbar holding a jewel, India, Mughal, circa 1600

Gouache heightened with gold on paper, mounted with later blue borders painted in gold with flowers, trees, birds and clouds, reverse with inscriptions in English and pasted notes

Some areas of rubbing and subsequent loss of paint to central image, notably by the figure's legs and halo, some creasing to the right hand edge and one light crease to left edge, small dark stain to top left corner, colours bright, exterior border in good condition, as viewed.
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This portrait shows the Emperor Akbar, mature in years, holding a small jewel in his right hand, his head surrounded by a radiating gold nimbus. The style of the portrait is typical of the last years of the sixteenth century or the first years of the seventeenth, when Akbar was in his late 50s and early 60s. The quality of the portrait is very good and Akbar's face is sensitively handled, showing a certain jowliness around the mouth and a gently tired expression in the eyes. His body, however, is quite upright and does not show the stooped attitude that is occasionally depicted in other portraits. Another aspect of the quality of the painting is the strong corporeal volume and three-dimensionality of the figure. This is partly due to the three-quarter pose that the artist has chosen, but it extends to details such as the glove draped over the dagger and tucked in to the waistband, whose floppy wrist protrudes towards the viewer before falling vertically in the fingers. The physical naturalism exhibited in the glove is highly accomplished.

The glove itself is an interesting feature, being almost certainly a falconer's gauntlet. A painting by Manohar in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, shows Akbar (again in old age) with a falcon on his gloved hand, and Khan Alam, standing behind him, has a gauntlet tucked into his waistband in a similar manner to Akbar's here, although it does not cover the dagger (see Topsfield 2008, no.25, pp.58-59).

The present portrait appears to have been in an old English collection. The reverse carries an inscription in ink in a nineteenth or early twentieth-century hand reading "King Akbar the Great". In addition a types note in purple ink, probably from the mid-twentieth century, giving biographical information about Akbar.