Cosmopolitan Visions: Art and Architecture from the Islamic Courts of Southern India

Professor Deborah Hutton delivered an exploration of the diverse visual cultures that flourished circa 1600 in South Asia’s Deccan region. The Deccan is the plateau that connects northern and southern India, and in the 16th and 17th centuries, it was home to a number of Islamic kingdoms, each with its own distinct courtly culture that produced elegant architecture, lush paintings, and sumptuous objects. These courtly cultures combined religious, linguistic, and regional traditions in ways that might surprise us today. Merchants, soldiers, poets, and artists from a range of locales in Europe, Africa, Central Asia, and north India made their way to the Deccan and further added to the cosmopolitan mix. The arts of the Islamic Deccan provide a delightful window into the richly layered landscape of South Asian art and remind us just how diverse our shared global heritage is.