Charlotte Mullins comments on School Scene

THIS School Scene by Mir Sayyid Ali teems with detail. There are men making paper and hanging it out to dry in a garden filled with blossom trees. Students copy calligraphy in the ornate schoolhouse, their shoes stashed in alcoves by the entrance. One student may have been caught sleeping on the job, as the schoolmaster has a cane raised to strike him. Three men sit around a large pot on an open fire as another student—barefoot in a blue robe—appears to be rolling out clay. The master pops up on the school roof and again in the garden, inspecting all their work.

Ali was a Persian painter who was recruited by the exiled Mughal emperor Humayun in about 1540, when this was painted. Originally, the full-page painting would have been part of a large, bound manuscript. Persian artists often used stock images for figures—the master beating the student appears in other 16thcentury paintings, for example—but they wove them into new narratives.

There is no Western perspective here, no attempt to trick the eye into thinking that this is a window on the real world. Instead, scale and colour are put to work to help tell the story. The master appears larger than those who serve him because he is the most important person in the scene; flat bands of colour are all that are needed to divide School Scene into courtyards, rooms and gardens. The end result is a 500-year-old painting packed full of storytelling, action and intricate details.