Metamorphosis at the Mughal court

• Autores: Jessica Keating
• Localización: Art history: journal of the Association of Art Historians, ISSN 0141-6790, Vol. 38, Nº. 4, 2015 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Objects in motion in the early modern world / coord. por Daniela Bleichmar, Meredith Martin), págs. 732-747
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • This essay examines the appearance of a German automaton of the Roman Goddess Diana atop a stag in a seventeenth-century Mughal painting of the Emperor Jahangir (1569-1627) receiving the Safavid Shah 'Abbas I (1571-1629). It asks what relationship is constructed in the painting between this automaton and a figure who presents it. And what can this painting tell us about the function and value of the "Diana Automaton" beyond its point of origin in northern Europe? In addition to presenting instances of European automata that travelled to India in the early modern period, this essay also reconsiders the recommendation that we understand objects that crossed cultural borders as hybrid, and it shows that the inclusion of the "Diana Automaton" in the painting suggests a more robust metaphor for thinking about and describing transcultural objects.