A floral fantasy of animals and birds (Waq-waq) (early 1600s): Art, History and Details

A floral fantasy of animals and birds (Waq-waq) (early 1600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

A magical plant simultaneously brings forth and eats animal life in multiple forms. Playfully rendered, real and mythic creatures ripen on the vine. All stems issue from the elephant, who is about to eat the main branch, while he, in turn, emerges from one that is about to be cut by the teeth of an ibex at the lower right. This painting would have beguiled courtly connoisseurs who enjoyed discovering visual puns in a royal album. Learned viewers would note that an animal-bearing plant recalls medieval Persian stories about the mythical island of Waq-waq, inhabited by half-plant/half-animal creatures.

Object facts

• Title: A floral fantasy of animals and birds (Waq-waq)
• Date: early 1600s
• Culture: Mughal India
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Page: 37.6 x 26.6 cm (14 13/16 x 10 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 2013.319

A detail from the museum

The dragon threatens to singe the boar’s beard.

Collection credit

Gift in honor of Madeline Neves Clapp; Gift of Mrs. Henry White Cannon by exchange; Bequest of Louise T. Cooper; Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund; From the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Fraser, Marcus. Deccan and Mughal Paintings: The Collection of Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Ralph Benkaim. Volume 2. England: Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection, 2013.
• India 1966: A Pictorial Diary Depicting Indian Birds and Animals [= India 1966: agenda illustre sur les oiseaux et animaux l'Inde = India 1966: ein Bildkalender indischer Vögel und Tiere]. New Delhi: Government of India, 1966.
• Welch, Stuart Cary, and Mark Zebrowski. A Flower from Every Meadow: Indian Paintings from American Collections. New York: Asia Society; distributed by New York Graphic Society, 1973.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.