Study on Aqa Reza Jahangiri's works of art Iranian Painter of Jahangir shah’s court

Muraqqa Golshan is one of the famous masterpieces manuscripts which is made and illustrated during Jahangir Shah’s reign in India (century 11 Ah). One of the importances of this Muraqqa is about art historic studies of Iranian and Indian paintings at the time of Safaivid and Mugals when Iranian art and culture was noticeable for mugal kings. Furthermore, This is a collection in various types of paintings and calligraphys which is one of the best collections of renowned Iranian and Indian painters and calligraphers such as Bihzad, Abd-al- Samad, Mir Seid Ali, Sultan Ali Mashhadi and Bishindas. Among these painters, Aqa Riza is one of the painters who like some other elites of Iranian society had immigrated to India at the time of Safaivid and started to work for the young Emperor Jahangir when he was as a prince. Little is known of the family background of this painter beyond Jahangir’s reference to him as “Aqa Riza al Heravi”. It is evident from the artist’s signature that most of his works of art was illustrated at the time of Jahangir’s princedom (he called Shah Salim).By the order of Shah Salim, painters practiced and made adaptations from European engravings which most of them had include of Christianity context so Aqa Riza used to apply hem in his paintings too. During these years Jahangir’s taste had been changed a lot. He was fascinated by these topics such as his father Akbar Shah. During these years and years later Indian paintings had confronted with a lot of changes. European realism and aesthetics, shadows, lights had been become to Indian paintings. In this reason Aqa Riza was studying and practice European paintings, engravings and western techniques too. Then elements drawn from European sources, as well as those taken from earlier Mugal painting are placed in his Iranian compositional frame work which is shown in paintings borders. However he remained faithful to Persian aesthetics. The Iranian aspect of his style is clearly evident in some of illustrations which will be introduced in this paper. The main focus of this article is on salim Shah’s studio within his few years of princedom and will be shown Aqa riza’s family background, artistic career, his style, technique and introduce his works of art. The main sources of this artist’s works of art are some isolated pages from Golshan album and illustrations from Anvar-e-Sohaily which is held in British library, but in this article are proceeded to the Golshan Muraqqa. To reach this purpose the author will try to analyze different names of the painter which is came on his signature and also will described about his artistic environment. In addition at the end of the article all of the paintings in that album will be introduced. In this case the author has tried to research among the original sources such as Golshan Muraqqa in Golestan Palace manuscript library and other source books. The way of this research is descriptive and analytical.