Tracing the history of a mughal album page in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Abstract

This article presents recent research resulting from collaboration between the Conservation Center of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and Laura E. Parodi, a specialist of Mughal painting. It focuses on the recto of M.78.9.11, a Mughal album page whose image panel bears a date corresponding to 1591 CE [5] (figs. 1-2). On the basis of the suggestion that certain areas of the recto page may have been repainted, a technical examination focusing on the image panel was carried out which led to relevant findings. Fig. 2 A complex sequence of successive interventions has been documented – including overpainting, enlargement and reframing – whose dates span a minimum of seventy years, from the mid-16th to the early 17th centuries. Certain iconographic features suggest some possible later restorations, but these will require further substantiation. Although the degree of complexity witnessed in M.78.9.11 will hardly prove typical, this type of analysis is likely to yield significant results when applied to similar works of art. As our research shows, the chronology of Mughal (and, more generally, Persianate) album pages cannot be assessed on the basis of visible evidence alone. This is further confirmed by a preliminary inquiry conducted on other Mughal pages in LACMA’s collection, which will be published in due course. The potential inherent in a combined technical-iconographic-stylistic analysis for the study of Persianate painting cannot be overestimated.