Author:

Moumita Manna
Independent Researcher
Department of Islamic History & Culture
University of Calcutta,
Kolkata,West Bengal, India

Email: mannamoumita2702@gmail.com

Abstract: The history of Mughal painting between approximately 1550 and 1650 has often been narrated through the preferences, ideologies and political ambitions of imperial patrons. This study shifts the focus from imperial patronage to the agency, identity and social status of Mughal painters. It examines Mughal painters as historically situated agents whose identities developed through workshop practice, artistic-collaboration, expertise, signatures, self-fashioning, mobility and system of courtly rewards. Drawing on Persian chronical, manuscript colophons, inscription, album ascriptions, portraits and visual analysis, the study adopts an interdisciplinary approach combining art history, social history and material culture. It argues that artistic agency in the Mughal atelier did not signify modern individual autonomy; rather it operated through collaboration, institutional participation, technical innovation and the production of imperial knowledge. Particular attention is given to the tasvir-khana, the relationship between collective authorship and individual recognition and the ways signatures and artistic titles negotiated humility and visibility. This study further demonstrates that painters occupied an intermediate yet influential social position: subordinate within the political hierarchy but increasingly recognised as specialised producers of knowledge and visual culture. Ultimately, Mughal painting emerges as a negotiated process in which patronage and artistic agency mutually shaped the visual identity of the empire.

Key Words: Imperial , Identity, Mughal Painting, Manuscript culture, Social status etc.