What Deccani painting is

Deccani painting can be traced from the late sixteenth century to the 1680s, when the Mughals conquered the Deccan. It continued later under the Asafiya dynasty and the provincial courts of the Nizam's Hyderabad.

For a long time it was filed under Indo-Persian art, and thought to be Safavid, Turkish or Mughal in origin. Historians saw that it was unique, but did not treat it as a full school of its own.

It grew under the Sultans of the Deccan, on the plateau beyond the Vindhyas, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The kingdoms of Bijapur, Golconda and Ahmadnagar developed a sophisticated court painting, full of sensuality, intense colours, dense compositions and an aura of romance.

Portraits that recorded real people were common to Islamic art across Asia and to Mughal art; the Deccan added its own regional sense of beauty.