English: Location: Qandahar

Culture: India (Mughal court at Agra)

Medium: Opaque watercolor, ink and gold on paper

Payag’s versatility is seen in this disturbing evocation of the horrors of war, in which mines are used to breach the fort defenses of Qandahar, near Hyderabad. Their explosive force sends billowing smoke littered with corpses into the sky. Like most artists in the employ of the Mughal ateliers, Payag probably held a commission in the imperial army. Certainly, his intimate knowledge of the machinery of Mughal warfare seen here was based on direct experience; Mughal painters were routinely sent to document campaigns, somewhat akin to modern-day war artists. The painting is startling for its European inspired theatrical use of the natural light source, which ricochets across the landscape like shrapnel. This is both a heroic and a humane image of warfare.