Manjnun in the Wilderness, India, Mughal or Sub-Imperial, mid-17th Century

Arthur B. Michael Fund, 1942.

Collection of Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo.

The illustration from the popular tale of the lovers Layla and Majnun depicts the emaciated Majnun kneeling beneath a tree within a rocky outcrop feeding a deer, surrounded by a coterie of wild animals including birds, water fowl, gazelle, nilgai, ibex, lions, water buffaloes and elephants. According to the legend, Majnun’s ill-fated love for his paramour Layla drove him mad. Shunning society he retreated to the wilderness where he befriended animals and lived amongst them. 

The distinguishing feature of the painting – the fantastical rockwork – is a hallmark of the Mughal atelier. The viewer’s eye is led from the meandering stream below through the clusters of rocks, each a different hue, in the center, and ends at the sprig of wild leaves issuing from a crag on the upper right. The seated figure of Majnun and the tree at center anchor this somewhat ‘floating’ landscape. The emaciated, sparsely-clad Majnun is sensitively rendered. His slender, attenuated form is somewhat exaggerated but his face bears an otherworldly expression and he is completely at one with the birds and beasts in his wild surrounding.

Great attention is paid to naturalistic details such as the recumbent lion licking its paw at center right and the configuration of baby elephants gamboling in the stream at lower left under the watchful gaze of their elders. The prominent blue nilgai at center left brings to mind the superlative Nilgai Portrait in the Walters Art Gallery Baltimore, accession no. W. 865. These elements hew close to the preferred style in the Mughal atelier during the early period of Emperor Jehangir’s reign (circa 1610). Yet, the differing degrees of finesse in execution including unfinished details, suggests either the hand/s of an artist/s in training or possibly the work of a sub-Imperial workshop during a slightly later period.

For more information on paintings from the Jehangir era, see Milo Cleveland Beach, The Imperial Image: Paintings for the Mughal Court, Washington D.C., 1981.