Shah Jahan, Dara Shikoh and the later Mughals

Shah Jahan (1628-1658) preferred idealisation and stylisation to naturalism: jewel-like colours, a perfect finish, fine lines, and grand imperial portraits with glorious titles.

His court chronicle, the Padshahnama ('Chronicles of the King'), has multiple perspectives, rich colour and complex compositions. The Dutch painter Rembrandt studied Mughal drawings to master their lines.

Dara Shikoh, Shah Jahan's eldest son, was a scholar and a Sufi who loved Vedanta. He appears in Dara Shikoh with Sages in a Garden. Haji Madni's Marriage Procession of Dara Shikoh shows him on a brown stallion, wearing a sehra, beside Shah Jahan with a halo, amid music and fireworks.

Aurangzeb defeated Dara and turned his attention to conquest. He gave painting less support, though the atelier was not shut down at once.

Skilled artists left for provincial courts. Works made under Muhammad Shah Rangila, Shah Alam II and Bahadur Shah Zafar (exiled to Burma after 1857) were the last flickers, before the Provincial and Company styles took over.