Courtier with Attendants in a Garden, folio from an album
first half of the 16th century
Description
This painting depicts three youths in a garden. The aristocratic central figure, wearing an ornamented robe and holding a wine cup, leans against a blossoming tree. One of his attendants, kneeling on the left, offers him flowers and a golden tray, while the other carries his quiver of arrows. The languid and lyrical scene is rendered with delicate brushwork and sensitivity to detail evident in the figures’ communicative gestures and gazes and in the variety of naturalistic flowering plants. A long-necked ceramic vase on a golden stand bears traces of an inscription added at a later time and now illegible. The setting of this painting, with its patterned wall, flowering tree, meandering stream, and blooming ground plants, is typical of garden scenes produced in Uzbek ateliers. The young men’s facial features and squat turbans further support a Shaybanid Central Asian attribution. The painting is currently mounted as an album page. Examined under a microscope, its paper support is shown to be very thin and to have many creases and cracks, possibly because the folio on which the painting was executed was removed from its original context and split into two sheets. At the upper right is a reversed seal-impression, transferred from a facing album page.
Dimensions
33.2 x 21.1 cm (13 1/16 x 8 5/16 in.)
Provenance
Stanford and Norma Jean Calderwood, Belmont, MA (by 1974-2002), gift; to Harvard Art Museums, 2002.
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