Julian Bell - Mughal Painting

For about a century from 1560, painters in India were employed by their Mughal masters to participate in a great aesthetic and ideological experiment. The pictures they made for imperial manuscripts were visionary and boldly poetic, but they also described the world of facts precisely. The patrons aimed at a fusion of Persian, Hindu and European traditions. What drove the artists themselves, and how should we now approach the character of their enterprise? Julian Bell sets in context an extraordinary episode in art history and opens up contemporary debates on its interpretation. 

Julian Bell is a painter and writer on art, based in Lewes, Sussex. His books include What is Painting? (2017) and Mirror of the World: A New History of Art (2007).