Artwork story
About Chand Bibi Hawking with Attendants in a Landscape
The artist and artwork
An unknown Deccani painter made Chand Bibi Hawking with Attendants in a Landscape around 1700 with opaque watercolor, gold, and silver on card-weight paper. The small vertical work is an idealized courtly image, not a portrait made from life: Chand Bibi had died about a century earlier. Its fine outlines, jeweled surfaces, layered green hills, pink rocks, animals, and miniature village episodes preserve the vivid, fantastic landscape language associated with Deccani painting.
The world around it
Chand Bibi was a sixteenth-century princess of Ahmadnagar who married the ruler of Bijapur, served there as regent, then returned home and defended Ahmadnagar against Mughal attack. Her intelligence and military leadership made her a legendary Chand Sultana. By the time this image was painted, the Mughals had conquered the last Deccani sultanates in 1686. Artists under Mughal hegemony continued to picture her, often hawking, an elite pursuit usually associated with princes and male rulers, turning political history into heroic memory.
A detail to notice
Chand Bibi rides a white horse whose lower body has been colored red with henna, possibly signifying that it wades through blood or symbolizing courage in battle. She raises a hawk while three female attendants walk beside her; one carries a golden ceremonial sunshade that signals royal rank and doubles visually as a halo. Ahead lies a dark lotus pond filled with white birds. Tiny hunters cross the green middle distance, people work near village structures, and improbable pink mountains stack toward the sky. The queen's calm procession commands a whole living territory.
Look closer: materials, scale, and subjects
The recorded object is illustrated single work made in Opaque watercolor, gold, and silver on card-weight paper and held in the Islamic Art department.
Recorded dimensions include H. 10 in. (25.4 cm); W. 6 1/4 in. (15.9 cm).
Subject terms include Birds, Hawks, Queens, Men, Women, and Horses. Treat them as guideposts, not a complete interpretation.
Collection history and public-domain source
The collection credit line is Louis E. and Theresa S. Seley Purchase Fund for Islamic Art, 1999.
The individual artwork page and official image were verified as Public Domain on 2026-08-23.
No Context Gallery independently uses the public-domain image. The source museum has not endorsed, sponsored, or affiliated itself with these products.
Research sources
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