“The raven addresses the animals; single-page painting mounted on a detached album folio. Poised near the summit of a precipitous mountain, a raven or mynad bird leans down to address an assembly of real and fantastic animals. Fish, horses, dragons, lions, tigers, and a smiling cheetah join vultures, owls, cranes, ducks, and a simurgh (phoenix) to listen to the raven's words of wisdom. Possbile illustration to the Ottoman poet Lami'i Celebi's 'Serefu'l-Insan', a morality in which the animals complain of their ill-treatment by man. No text.
Ink, opaque watercolour and gold on paper.”
“This scene may illustrate a variant of the episode in the Anwar-i Suhayli of the crow addressing the birds to rally their support against the leader of the owls. Real animals are combined with dragons and the simurgh, or phoenix.
The overpainting of the text panel at the upper left hinders precise identification of the manuscript illustrated by this painting. The upward surge of animals and mountain is typical of later Akbari compositions.”
Image © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.
The #raven addresses the animals
Mughal dynasty (India), c.1590-1620
Mounted miniature in gouache on paper; sheet 29.9 x 22.2 cm
British Museum 1920,0917,0.5 www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o...
