A STUDY OF IBRAHIM ADIL SHAH II OF BIJAPUR

Private New York Collection since 1978

Fairly good overall condition. A diagonal crease running down the center of the image is clearly visible in the catalog illustration. Distress to background due to wear and age. Rubbing and abrasions to pigment on the ruler's garment and shoes also due to age,.
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Inscribed at lower left: "Rukn Ibrahim 'Adil Shah Padshah-e Dakan" (Translation: Ibrahim 'Adil Shah ruler of the Deccan).

The delicately haloed Sultan of Bijapur, Ibrahim 'Adil Shah II (1556-1627) stands in three-quarter view holding a long ceremonial sword.  A finely woven transparent gold-toned jama over mauve payjama with his dagger tucked into a gold flower-embroidered sash.   

"Ibrahim 'Adil Shah II was the greatest patron of the Arts that the Deccan produced." That succinct statement by Mark Zebrowski (1984) sums up the passionate and enlightened arts patronage of the Sultan during his reign.  He was certainly an inspiring catalyst for his Imperial atelier and pushed his artists to new heights of artistic refinement and imagination synthesizing native Deccani fantasy with the worldly naturalism developing at the Imperial painting workshops of the Mughals.

This study of Sultan Ibrahim is posthumous and likely dateable to the reign of his second successor Sikander (r. 1672-86).  Our drawing is close in manner to an image of the ruler seated among the "Sultans of the Adil Shahi Dynasty" in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, signed by artists Kamal Muhammad and Chand Muhammad.  That remarkable painting depicts an imaginary Darbar of the rulers of the Bijapur dynasty seated around its founder Sultan Yusef 'Adil Shah as he receives the keys of royal authority from a Persian potentate, likely either Shah Ismail or Shaykh Safi Ardabili (Zebrowski, 1983).  Ibrahim 'Adil Shah II is pictured to the immediate right of the enthroned Sultan Yusef and appears similar to our present drawing, depicted in three-quarter view with a slight smile, the eyes slanting up, an aquiline nose and laterally-extended moustache feathery at the edges.  

Refer to N. Haidar and M. Sardar, Sultans of Deccan India 1500-1700s: Opulence and Fantasy, Metropolitan Museum, New York, 2015; Alice Heeramaneck, Masterpieces of Indian Painting, Verona, 1984, pl. 235, p. 249; Stuart Cary Welch, India: Art and Culture 1300-1900, New York, 1985, cat. 208. pp. 310-11 and Mark Zebrowski, Deccani Painting, London, 1984, Pl. XVII, fig.118a, pp. 139-152.