El emperador Jahangir abraza a Shah Abbas

The two rulers in this embrace never actually met. Around 1618 the Mughal emperor Jahangir and Shah Abbas of Persia were circling each other over the fortress city of Kandahar, which Abbas wanted back, so Jahangir had his court painter imagine the friendship he could not win by arms. Look at what the two men stand on. A lion and a lamb lie across a globe, and Jahangir's larger frame presses down on the lion while Abbas balances on the lamb, each animal resting over that ruler's own lands. The globe itself was copied from a European one, brought to the Mughal court a few years earlier by an English ambassador, Thomas Roe. Jahangir's name means world-seizer, and here he has quietly seized most of it.