LA'L (ACTIVE 1570-1605)
Folio from a Mughal Album (painting by La'l, calligaphy by Mir 'Ali and Muhammad Husayn Kashmiri).
1590 - 1600RCIN 1005039
Two princes accompanied by older attendants discuss poetry beside a garden pavilion. Poetry and the garden had been inextricably linked in Persian culture for many centuries and illustrations like this are the successors of a series of Persian miniatures which since the thirteenth century had placed poets and mystics in a garden setting. Mystic poets such as Farrokhi (d. 1037) or Nizami (d. 1202) gave expression to a love of the garden in their poetry. Nizami’s verses form part of the composite sheet on which the Two Young Princes Discussing Poetry is mounted.