Art that travels and is borrowed

This lesson asks you to identify and explain ways in which artistic traditions in different times and places have been maintained, adapted or appropriated. The museum links a record of carpets that travelled into European paintings and a record of one historian's argument about borrowed architecture; the other traditions your class brings. ¹

Look at the expectation: it names three things that can happen to a tradition. Take one example and ask which of the three the record describes, and what the record says that supports your answer.

Milo Cleveland Beach, in the record on Mughal painting, describes a tradition that arrived and was changed. The emperor Akbar placed the Iranians Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd al-Samad in charge of the painting studios, yet what emerged was a new style mixing Hindu (Rajput) and Muslim Indian elements with those of Safavid Iran ². Persian works and European prints served as models, and European prints were the source of the new techniques of shading ^{3 4}. The record on Oriental carpets in Renaissance painting is much shorter: it gives only that Islamic carpets appear in European paintings from the fourteenth century onwards, and that some patterns are named after the painters ⁵.

A reader may take "borrowed" to mean copied. Rezavi's chapter holds that Indo-Muslim architecture borrowed heavily from Iranian, Transoxanian and regional Indian traditions, and that the borrowing grew much heavier after the Mughal dynasty was founded ⁶. His conclusion adds that the beauty of Mughal architecture came from synthesising these borrowings intelligently with indigenous elements, best seen in the Taj Mahal, and the record marks this as his view ⁷.

The expectation names three things that can happen to a tradition: it can be maintained, adapted or appropriated. Beach says that what emerged in the Mughal studios was a new style ², and Rezavi says Indian architects borrowed heavily from Iran ⁷. For one of the two, which of the three words fits best according to its author, and which of his sentences is your evidence?

• Mughal painting: the Iranian masters, the new style, and the European prints behind the shading.
• Iranian Influence on Medieval Indian Architecture: Rezavi's argument, from the Delhi Sultanate to the Mughals.
• Oriental carpets in Renaissance painting: a short record of carpets seen in European paintings.
• Taj Mahal: the building where Rezavi finds the blend of Iranian and local elements at its best.

Read Oriental carpets in Renaissance painting and Iranian Influence on Medieval Indian Architecture. Write one sentence on what moved in each, and one on who says so.