Oval portrait of a woman in a Chaghtai hat (c. 1740–50): Art, History and Details

Oval portrait of a woman in a Chaghtai hat (c. 1740–50) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The tall, flat-topped hat is an element of the native dress of the Mughals from eastern Uzbekistan. Of mixed Turkic and Mongol ethnicities, they spoke a Turkic language known as Chaghatai. Chaghatai refers to the name of the son of the Mongol Chingiz (Genghis) Khan, who ruled this area of Central Asia from 1246 to 1282. This woman’s hat has been studded with jewels and strings of pearls. The portrait jewel format that was once reserved for the emperor has now been expanded to include ladies of the court. The woman holds a jade wine cup and wears a draped upper garment with a woven or embroidered border similar to the fragment on display at the left.

Object facts

• Title: Oval portrait of a woman in a Chaghtai hat
• Date: c. 1740–50
• Culture: India, Mughal, 18th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 9.5 x 7.4 cm (3 3/4 x 2 15/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1920.1967

A detail from the museum

She holds a delicate jade cup of the type for which the Mughals were famous.

Collection credit

Gift of J. H. Wade

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.