A School Scene by Mir Sayyid Ali | Restored Persianate Wall Art

A bustling cross-section of a Persian schoolhouse — students hunched over slates and books on every floor, scribes at their desks, a teacher receiving a pupil, attendants playing music, others at work in the garden. Above the architecture: a man perched in a tree picking fruit; below: a small group preparing pigments. The whole composition reads like an ant farm of learning, every figure with a tiny, careful purpose.

Painted by Mir Sayyid Ali, Iran, Tabriz, ca. 1540 — one of the founding masters of the Mughal painting tradition. Mir Sayyid Ali was brought to India by Emperor Humayun and, with Abd as-Samad, established the imperial atelier that would shape Mughal art for the next two centuries. This folio, painted at the very start of his career in Tabriz, shows the Persian Safavid tradition he would later carry to India.

Restored from the museum archives by aurahliving.com.