Painting

Europeans first came to the Mughal empire in the late 1570s. By the early 1600s, there was regular contact between the Mughal court and Portuguese Goa, and merchants and adventurers came overland or by sea from Europe. A few of them took up residence at court. Their presence led to the occasional appearance of European figures in Mughal paintings or on the border decoration of manuscripts.

This painting, which on stylistic grounds dates to about 1610, is unlikely to be a contemporary portrait of a 17th-century European visitor to the Mughal court, however. Details of his dress (the pinked boots and the open-fronted ruff) are seen in European portraits of the 1580s, while the hilt of the rapier may date from as early as the 1560s, suggesting that the Mughal artist used a painting as his model.