Description
Three-year-old Mary bounds up the stairs of the temple, eager to begin her education. Onlookers gesture in surprise. In the background the rocks have been cleverly shaded to look like faces—a Persian technique of visual double-entendre that the Mughals admired and adopted. This work is the second of the 27 surviving paintings made for this manuscript. The first, a scene of Mary’s birth, is in a private collection in Europe.
Mary’s face had been painted with a fragile white paint, which has fallen off. Now only the underdrawing remains visible.
Mary’s face had been painted with a fragile white paint, which has fallen off. Now only the underdrawing remains visible.
Provenance
An Indian family in Great Britain, whose grandfather brought the manuscript to England in the 1930s or 1940s (before 1930s–2005); (Oliver Forge and Brendan Lynch Ltd., London, England, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) (2005); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (2005–)
Mary ascends the stairs to the temple, from a Mirror of Holiness (Mir’at al-quds) of Father Jerome Xavier
1602–4
Accession Number
2005.145.9.a
Medium
Gum tempera, ink, color, and gold on paper
Dimensions
Page: 26.2 x 15.5 cm (10 5/16 x 6 1/8 in.)
Classification
Manuscript
Credit Line
John L. Severance Fund
