ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the most distinctive element of Mughal painting that is pivotal to the hermeneutics of its conceptual structure namely, human representation. It defines the Mughal reformulation of the local hybridizing practice attested to by Akbari art entailed a major novelty in the images' structure namely, the engagement of the organizing principle of the visual syntax. The chapter discusses in many ways Akbari painting breaks away from the Persian prototypes despite the phenomenon of allure. The scarcity of material evidence proceeding the reign of Akbar veils the genesis of Mughal painting and a fortiori its aesthetic hybridity. In the Persian pictorial context, the chapter describes the traditional representational scheme that reflects basic human rationality had been progressively deconstructed by means of an unprecedented move in the history of painting in Islam. One may describe the phenomenon of Sultanate pictorial eclecticism in the following terms that underline its crucial importance as the precursor of aesthetic hybridity in Mughal painting.
