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Aqa Riza (i)

(b ?Mashhad; fl c. 1580–c. 1610). Iranian painter active in India. He joined the service of Prince Salim (later the Mughal emperor Jahangir (reg 1605–27) ) sometime before 1588; his son was the great painter ABU’L-HASAN. Various inscriptions tell us that Aqa Riza came from Mashhad and that another of his sons was the painter `ABID. Whereas Abu’l-Hasan developed consistently as a painter, Aqa Riza’s style remained basically consistent with his Safavid origins, a style of calligraphically drawn lines and surface pattern-making, with a few gestures—such as facial modelling—towards the naturalism for which Mughal painting was aiming under the direction of Akbar (reg 1556–1605). Prince Salim, perhaps out of filial antagonism, tended to favour the Safavid tradition, so that it is no surprise that Aqa Riza gravitated to his service.

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  Reproduced by kind permission of Macmillan Publishers Limited, publishers of The Grove Dictionary of Art.
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