Legend has it that when Ranjit Singh, the 18th century ruler of Punjab, asked one of his royal artists to paint his miniature portrait, the entire atelier was thrown into a dilemma. The problem was this: the king had lost an eye in a battle and convention of the time demanded that royalty could be represented only in a complimentary fashion. Yet, Ranjit Singh had asked for the painting to be as realistic as possible. Restless nights followed until a young artist came up with the perfect solution. The resultant painting was that of Ranjit Singh hunting, with one eye strategically closed to see through the gun. Such were the lives of the artists who worked under the patronage of India’s maharajas. Their art struck a delicate balance between that which pleased their masters and that which was truly art for art’s sake.

Royalty has been well represented in Indian art, going as far back as 1stAD, when the Greek warriors who settled in modern-day North West Frontier Province (Pakistan) decided to engrave their figures on currency.
It wasn’t until the 4th AD, in the Gupta period though, that the figures became sophisticated, with well-defined features and headgear. “Some figures even had a halo behind their heads. They wanted to show their people that they were god-like and possessed all the skills that an ideal man ought to have,” says Sabyasachi Mukherjee, director of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sanghralaya.

This continued to be the trend all the way up to the 16th century. It wasn’t until Akbar that rulers thought of getting themselves painted for reasons of vanity only. Enamoured by the impossibly detailed Persian miniatures, Akbar transported Turkish masters like Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd-al-Samad to India and directed them to teach Indian artists their art.
It was from these roots that the Rajas–thani miniatures were born – painted on peepal leaves, the paintings may have been less realistic than their Persian counterparts, but they were also infinitely brighter. The figures had uniquely Indian features – large, slightly angled eyes, angular faces and long ears.

Slowly, the paintings also moved away from the court scenes, processions and festivals depicted in early Mughal miniatures. As artists became ever more eager to please their rulers, it became fashionable to paint various aspects of their private lives, including love making, spending time in the zenana and even doing mundane things like shaving, as is demonstrated by a painting from the house of Raja Gaja Singh of Mewar.

In other miniature artwork of the time, the figure of the maharaja was always a little larger than those around him, often when it was a scene from the harem. “Power will always be a recurring theme with the depiction of royalty in art,” says Mukherjee.
Another recurring motif was that of ‘godliness’. The 18th century Kishangarh miniatures of Prince Savant Singh and his lover Bani Thani are a perfect example of this: the duo had been painted in a variety of cameos that depicted them as Krishna and Radha. While this would’ve been considered blasphemous now, then it was only another example of the almost superhuman status possessed by roalty.