A Morte de Inayat Khan

In October 1618, one of the Mughal emperor Jahangir's closest servants, Inayat Khan, was brought to court dying. Years of opium and wine had wasted him almost to nothing. Jahangir, startled by the sight, wrote in his own memoirs that it was so extraordinary he ordered his painters to record it. The artist Balchand drew the man propped on bolsters, skin drawn tight over bone, gazing at nothing. Mughal court painting usually flattered its subjects amid jewels and hunts, so turning that same skill on a body simply failing was unusual. A preliminary study for it survives too, made from life in the days before Inayat Khan died.