Mughal, dated AH 1018/AD 1609-10

Drawing with use of colour on paper, the Muse stands wearing a blue veil over plaited hair and a blue blouse and flowing orange skirt, thonged sandals on her feet, a scroll bearing a kufic inscription held in her hands, domed buildings on a hillside in the background, the inscription naming the artist as Sadiqi with the date AH 1018/AD 1609-10 on the upper part of the scroll, another inscription further down the scroll bears the place name Isfahan and the name Asaf Bahadur with the date AH 1015/AD 1606-7, mounted on an album page with red and blue borders and gilt-coloured margin rules, the numeral 1018 on outer border, nasta'liq inscription and labels on reverse including a Kevorkian label with the numeral 1353 C4 in pencil painting 190 x 83 mm.; album page 296 x 200 mm.

It was through aid to the exiled Mughal emperor Humayun (reg. 1530-1540 and 1553-1556) from Shah Tahmasp of Persia that the strong link between Persian and Mughal painting was established in the mid-16th Century. With Safavid help Humayun was restored to Kabul and it was here that the two Persian artists Mir Sayyid Ali of Tabriz and Abdus-Samad joined him in 1549, forming an important corner-stone in early Mughal painting. Mughal court painters responded well to the influences from the Persian masters and continued the tradition through subsequent decades. The Mughal emperors Akbar and Jahangir, son and grandson to Humayun, welcomed Persian artists to their flourishing courts and ateliers and Persian artists were happy to work in this growing empire under such patronage. There is evidence too that these Persian artists worked in the Deccan as shown in the work of a portrait of a lute player by Muhammad Taqi, son of Shaykh 'Abbasi, dated 1646, also from the collection of the Hagop Kevorkian Fund, and offered in the same Sotheby's sale in 1975.

Sadiqi, who died in Isfahan in 1610, and who is described by Titley as rather ill-tempered, was royal librarian at the court of Shah Abbas (reg. 1587-1629). He was a Persian artist of the highest calibre and the lavishly illustrated manuscript containing 107 miniatures of the 1593 Iranian copy of Anwar-i- Suhaili, formerly in the collection of the Marquess of Bute and now in the Sadruddin Aga Khan Collection, is an important example of his work. This manuscript, although eight years after Sadiqi's death, is known to have entered Jahangir's library at Ahmedabad, Gujarat in 1618, showing well the close communication between the Safavid and Mughal courts. Sadiqi, a great traveller, is likely to have had close contact with Aqa Riza of Herat and his son Abu'l Hasan who were eminent Persian artists working for Jahangir during his prince-hood and into his reign, and it is therefore highly probable that he went to India and worked at the Mughal court around this time in the first years of the 17th Century. Indeed it may have been Abu'l Hasan who introduced Sadiqi to European prints. This portrait, with the curious kufic dated inscription, is certainly after a North European print but bears Mughal influences too as seen in the background landscape which substantiate the theory of the work being executed at the Mughal court. There seem to be no other known examples Sadiqi's work bearing inscriptions in a kufic script, adding to the rarity and interest of this painting.