2-722-003 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

A blindfolded suitor is brought before a princess; verso: scrolling floral vines, 1755. In a scene set on a carpeted terrace in the women’s palace quarters, an older woman of the harem drags a young prince with a white blindfold over his eyes before a princess grasping a document. Such a scene evokes a literary allusion of a princess who selects her suitor, but it also resonates with circumstances at the Mughal court. Signed and dated by the artist, this painting was completed at a time when powerful women wielded control over the emperor, and Ahmad Shah Bahadur (reigned 1748-54), son and successor of Muhammad Shah, had been blinded and deposed less than one year before.