The Witsen Album with 49 miniatures of rulers

1686

Witsen’s collection included this album of portraits of successive rulers of the Mughal dynasty. For Witsen, the portraits were a source of knowledge about India’s history. He even had the Persian inscriptions translated by Hendrick Francken, a Protestant minister who had been posted in Smyrna (now Izmir) for many years. The little portraits were made in Golconda, where Indian miniaturists worked especially for the Europeans who were stationed there because of the textile trade.