Akbar

At the end of the 16th century and beginning of the 17th, court artists in the Mughal empire sometimes produced paintings using pale, predominantly monochrome washes highlighted with gold and touches of body colour. The style was known as 'nim qalam', literally 'half pen in Persian, the language of the court and of the elite across the empire'. The minimalist style was used here to depict the emperor Akbar (r. 1556-1605) following the kingly sport of hawking, and the anonymous artist has confined the use of gold to those parts of the composition closest to the ruler, emphasizing his royal status.