The Great Mughals: a 'treasure trove' of an exhibition

Painting from the Great Mughals exhibition — The exhibition 'leaves identity politics at the door' (Image credit: Victoria & Albert Museum)

"It's hard not to be dazzled" by the V&A's new show, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. "The Great Mughals" is packed with "glittering objects" and "sumptuous artefacts", all "skilfully wrought" from expensive materials. But it is far more than an impressive display of "bling".

The exhibition, subtitled "Art, Architecture and Opulence", charts a century of artistic achievement during the reigns of the three greatest Mughal emperors: Akbar (1556-1605), his son Jahangir (1605-1627) and his grandson Shah Jahan (1628-1658), who built the Taj Mahal.

Bringing together more than 200 objects, including portraits, tapestries, manuscripts, weapons, furniture and clothing, it argues that Mughal rule was a period of cosmopolitan hybridity, in the course of which successive rulers embraced both Muslim and Hindu artistry, as well as Persian and European culture. It is a "spellbinding" show that "leaves identity politics at the door and exults in aesthetics". I urge you not to miss it.

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Supposedly descended from Genghis Khan, the Mughal emperors ruled from the 16th to the mid-19th century, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. Akbar, the third Mughal emperor and the first of the exhibition's "greats", used "military might", diplomacy and administrative acumen to expand and stabilise the empire, while indulging a "love of culture and beauty". Although "illiterate", he spared no expense employing both Hindu and Muslim artists to create vast libraries of illuminated manuscripts filled with "ravishing illustrations" that combine "closely observed reality with transporting fantasy": one on display here shows a giant being chased through clouds by a lifelike army of humans; another has a princess from Kabul lowering her hair from a tower so that a lover can climb up from "a brilliantly realistic garden where ducks swim in a rectangular pool". Jahangir, Akbar's successor, commissioned a similar trove of beautiful images, sharpened by "a natural historical and scientific curiosity". One depicts an imported North American turkey, a specimen that became an object of curiosity in the Mughal court.

The show puts paid to the idea that "cultural appropriation" is an exclusively Western phenomenon, said Laura Freeman in The Times. The Mughals "appropriated everything under the Sun, polished it, bettered it, traded it, revelled in it": we see Colombian emeralds bought from Portuguese traders, Chinese porcelain, Japanese lacquer boxes. Almost every exhibit speaks of "astonishing craftsmanship" and teems with detail: a jewelled shield inlaid with mother-of- pearl "is practically a world in itself, spinning" with images of "processions, parasols, sedan chairs" and even "miniature workshops"; and an "exquisite" satin hunting coat is embroidered with "peacocks, storks, ducks, hares" and other creatures. This is a "treasure trove" of an exhibition that bursts with "surpassing beauty".