Sultanate of Delhi (1206 - 1526)

The World's Tallest Minaret:

To mark the triumph of Islam, Qutb al-Din Aybak built a great congregational mosque at Delhi, in part with pillars taken from Hindu and other temples he demolished.

Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaikh to Kings, Bichitr, Mughal Painting, India, ca. 1615-1618Opaque watercolor on paper

The Mughal court had no equal in India in its lavish patronage of the arts. By giving the Koran to the Muslim holy man, Jahangir shows him honor over the two kings depicted and gives up worldly life and control for the spiritual.

A mausoleum in paradise:

Monumental tombs were not part of either the Hindu or Buddhist traditions, but had a long history in Islamic architecture. In India, the Mughal Shah Jahan built the famous Taj Mahal.

1632--1647

Krishna and Radha in a PavilionIndia, ca. 1760

Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu, was a cowherd who spent an idyllic existence tending his cows and sporting with beautiful herdswomen. As many Indian works of art are expressions of all that is sensuous and erotic with the body, so is this work depicting Krishna as he tenderly embraces Radha beneath a pavilion.

Great Temple, Madurai, India, 17th century.

The Nayak rulers, once vassals of the Vijayanagara kings, came to power in the 17th century. They built huge temple complexes. The builders erected large enclosure walls with directional gorupas (gateway towers like the one here) that stand about 150 feet tall. These are large and are almost like independent cities with thousands of pilgrims & many festivals each year.

Walking Buddha, from Sukhothai, Thailand14th century bronze

The Thai people revere the distinctive type of Buddha image that developed at Sukhothai. The Sukhothai Buddhas are highly idiosyncratic. A flame leaps from the head and a sharp nose projects from the rounded face. A clinging robe reveals fluid rounded limbs andinflated bodies. The Sukhothai walkking-Buddha statuary type does not occur elsewhere in Buddhist art. The Buddha strides forward, raising his heel off the ground, his left arm raised with the hand held in the fear-not gesture of a deity encouraging worshippers to come forwarrd in reverence. Thee Sukhothai artists intended the body type to suggest a supernatural being expressing beauty and perfection.

Schwedagon Pagoda, Rangoon, Burma, ca. 14th century

Renowned for the gold, silver,and jewels encrustingits surface, the Shwedagon Stupa stands 345feet high. Its upper part is covered with 13,153 plates of gold and at the very top is a 7 tiered umbrella covered with a gold ball inlaid with4,351 diamonds, one weighing 76 carats. The stupa was created as a gift to the Buddha from the Burmese people.

BambooBamboo, Wu Zhen, Yuan Dynasty, 1350, Wu Zhen, Yuan Dynasty, 1350The pattern of bamboo leaves, like that of calligraphic script, provided painters with an excellent The pattern of bamboo leaves, like that of calligraphic script, provided painters with an excellent opportunity to display brushwork proficiency.opportunity to display brushwork proficiency.

Temple vase, China, Yuan Dynasty, 1351. White porcelain with cobalt blue underglaze

The vase was part of an altar set donated to a Buddhist temple as a prayer for peace, protection, and prosperity for the donor’s family. It is one of the earliest examples of fine porcelain with cobalt blue underglaze decoration. It reveals the foundations for the potters and decorators of Jingdezhen, which during the Ming Dynasty became the official source of porcelains for thegovernment and court.

Taihe Dian, Imperial Palace, Forbidden City, Beijing, China, 17th century and later

The red walls, pillars and yellow glazed roof-tiles, and the dougong and beams decorated with dark-green designs of dragons, phoenixes and geometric figures, are conspicuous against the grey background of Beijing. Twenty-four emperors lived in and ruled China from the Forbidden City over nearly 500 years."

Lin Yuan (Lingering Garden), Jiangsu Province, ChinaChinese gardens are sanctuaries where people commune with nature in all its representative forms and as an ever-changing and boundless prescence.

Marxism inspired a social realism in art that broke drastically with the traditional Chinese art. The intended purpose of such art is to serve thepeople in the struggle to liberate and elevate the masses. This can be seen in Rent Collection Courtyard, a life size tableau located in Dayi. An anonymous crew of sculptors portrayed the peasants, worn and bent by their toil, bringing their taxes to the courtyard of the merciless landlord.

Dry cascade and pools, upper garden, Saihoji temple, Kyoto, Japan, modified during the Muromachi period, 14th century.Arrangements of rock and sand on the hillsides of the garden, especially the dry cascade and pools are treasured examples of Muromachi dry landscape gardening.

Kano Motonobu, Zen Patriarch Xiangyen Zhixian Sweeping with a broom, Muromachi period, ca. 1513

The son of a painter and the son-in-law of Tosa Mitsunobu, Kano Motonobu established an efficient workshop -- the Kano School -- which became a virtual national academy. Here he depicts a monk experiencing the moment of enlightenment. As Xiangyen swept the ground near his near his rustic retreat , a stone struck against a stalk of bamboo. The patriarch Zen training was so deep that the resonant sound propelled him into awakening. The work shows Motonobu’s precise mode of painting in ink and light color.

Tea-ceremony water jar, or Kogan (“ancient stream bank”), Momoyama period, late 16th century

Starting around the late 15th century, admiration of the technical brilliance of Chinese objects gave way to an appreciation of the virtues of rustic Japan-ese wares. This new aesthetic of refined rusticity,or wabi, included the design of simple tea rooms and houses that evoked the hut of a recluse in the mountains (Zen). The coarse stoneware body, simple form, and casual decoration reflect this aesthetic.

Hasegawa Tohaku, Pine Forest, Monoyama period, late 16th c.

Tohaku had close connections with Zen temples and sometimes painted in ink monochrome using loose brushwork with brilliant success. His wet brush strokes -- long and slow, short and quick, dark and pale -- present a grove of great pines shrouded in mist.

Eastern façade of Katsura Imperial Villa, Kyoto, Edo periodBuilt between 1620 and 1663, this building dates from the time of the tea ceremony’s greatest popularity. Many of the villa’s design features & tasteful subtleties derive from earlier teahouses, but it moves away from Rikyu’s wabi extremes, incorporating elements of courtly gracefulness.

Hiroshige's "One hundred views of famous places of Edo"

Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, from Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji series, Edo period, ca. 1826-1833, woodblock print