Sultans of Deccan India, 1500-1700: Opulence and Fantasy

Accompanying a landmark exhibition of the same name at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this thoroughly researched and lushly illustrated catalogue celebrates two centuries of art from the Deccan Plateau of India. Under flourishing Muslim courts, Indian and Persian artists brought forth a golden age of innovation and production in disciplines such as architecture, metalworking, and miniature painting. The works in the exhibition have been gathered from around the globe, and the book breaks ground in the scholarship around Deccani art. The catalogue includes a generous 350 illustrations in 368 pages, with over 200 exhibition objects recreated and given brief essays to explain their historical and aesthetic significance. For example, the authors underscore the ornate design of the gold, ink, and watercolor calligraphy from a 16th-century set of Qur'ans by exploring the clouded biography of the calligrapher and the history of regional book arts. Accompanying this tour of the exhibit are a number of landscape photographs, a history of the Deccan courts, and similar scholarly apparatuses. Satisfying on every level, this book does what the best catalogues should do, providing an engaging education while delighting in the sheer indulgence of its brilliant and rarely seen images. Illus. (May)