There are different ways in which the events of history are documented and discovered. Manuscripts retelling tales have been helpful, but paintings have also done their fair share in narrating history. Historians and authors have, for decades, studied the paintings of emperors and their activities to identify key events and characters.
“So much of what we know about the Mughals comes from their art. With every emperor, there is a change in the style in terms of symbology, iconography, and imagery, and we know a lot about what they ate and how they behaved from these paintings,” says author Ashwitha Jayakumar.
At her workshop, How to Read a Mughal Painting: Understanding the Mughals through their Art, Ashwitha aims to teach people how to look at a painting and consider it a historical source. “How can we read a painting, what are the symbols we can identify, what can we tell about the person who painted this, what can we tell about the person who commissioned the painting, what does it mean for this painting to exist, and how much can we recover of the Mughal world-view from the painting?” these are some of the questions that will be answered at the workshop, she says.
Through this two-hour workshop, people aged over 13 will be taken through the concepts and then participate in a scavenger hunt in a Where’s Wally? style (a picture puzzle book where readers are expected to find the character Wally among the chaos). “I will give people a list of things to look for in four or five Mughal paintings, and then we’ll talk about these elements that they found,” she says, adding that there is a reason that some elements are repeated in multiple paintings and this activity will explore the meaning behind the symbols and elements.
Through the course of uncovering the meaning behind paintings and understanding the visual language of these artworks, the workshop will also encourage participants to make their own paintings using these elements and tell their stories.
To register for How to Read a Mughal Painting: Understanding the Mughals through their Art, log on to thehindu.com/lit-for-life/workshop
Published – January 10, 2025 04:25 pm IST
The Hindu MetroPlus
