’Art & soul
The chamber of millions

There is a curious mingling of Indian art and works inspired by it in the Schonbrunn
Palace, the seat of imperial power in Vienna, writes B. N. Goswamy

THERE are no obvious historical links between Austria and India that could explain this — not certainly in the area of art — and yet there are at least two major ‘holdings’ of Indian art in that land. Of the Dastan-i Amir Hamza — that series of great, and unequalled, paintings that was produced for the emperor Akbar by his painters in the 16th century — the largest surviving group remains in the Museum fur Angewandte Kunst in Vienna: more than 60 folios. And one of the chambers in the Schonbrunn Palace, the splendid seat of imperial power, houses a large assemblage of Mughal paintings that form part of the sumptuous decoration on its walls from floor to ceiling. How these works got there has been written about by different scholars, some of them early in the last century — Heinrich Gluck and Josef Strzygowski among them; but the surprise abides.

The story of how Indian art started entering the awareness of European artists in the last three or four centuries is fascinating in itself, and needs to be told another time, for great and famous painters like Rembrandt and Delacroix and Schellinks are all part of it.

This note, however, is only on one specific room — the ‘Millionenzimmer", the ‘Chamber of Millions’ in other words — in the great Schonbrunn Palace, for in it there is a curious mingling of Indian art and art inspired by Indian art. Somewhere in the 17th century, or early in the 18th, a large cache of Indian paintings — essentially Mughal, but in part Deccani — landed in Austria, as one knows: possibly through someone working in the Dutch East India Company.

These paintings — a mixed lot, but many of them high quality work produced for the emperor Shahjehan — just lay there in the imperial collection till Austrian Empress, Maria Theresa (ruled 1740-1780), decided to incorporate them in her scheme of things when she began to renovate and refurbish the palace which had, till her time, remained unfinished.

There was art from other lands and cultures too that found its place in the imperial palace, but it was the art of India that came to be housed in the ‘Chamber of Millions’ which served as the Empress’s audience and conference room. However, everything had to be subordinated to the overall decorative scheme of the palace interiors: elaborate panelling, gilded stuccowork, ornamental rococo frames and cartouches. Accordingly, the Indian paintings were — quite unfeelingly — cut up, joined together, over-painted, put under glass, and so on, so as to fit into those frames and the decorative scheme. Everything — ‘scenes of the court or harem, historical events, hunts, literary subjects, assemblies of sheikhs, and women or princes visiting ascetics or holy men’ — got mixed up, collaged, or trimmed in the process. Viewed from the Indian perspective, this was nothing short of a vandalising act but, apparently, to imperial eyes, the room must have looked resplendent.

However, this and much else about the ‘Chamber of Millions’ has already been written about, as I said before. What is of equal interest is something to which Dr Ebba Koch, Austrian art historian, has drawn attention recently. While working on the restoration of the Millionenzimmer, together with a colleague of hers in the last few years, she kept speculating about who might have directed the entire project of fitting Mughal paintings in that decorative scheme. Cautiously, she simply designated him as "the Schonbrunn painter" even though the thought came to her mind that it might have been the Austrian painter Johann Wenzel Bergl (1718-1789).

In any case, this painter took upon himself the task of forming a new pictorial whole, using Indian paintings: cutting, joining, coalescing, ‘unifying’ compositions, as it were. But he also added to the room by his own paintings in the area between walls and ceiling, technically called the cavetto. Interestingly, however, while he showed little regard to the integrity of the Indian paintings he was working with on the walls, he "studied them", as Koch points out, "most carefully and with great sympathy in order to be ‘authentic’ in his own additions." In fact, in the 12 panels in the cavetto which are his own, and which he added to the room, this painter was creating his own Mughalised paintings: his ‘Moghuleries’, as she calls them.

There is something certainly engaging about the work one sees in the 12 panels, for, if nothing else, these "represent the only European wall paintings after Mughal models known so far." The scenes he painted were all based on Mughal works the painter had become familiar with: we see thus an enthroned emperor receiving a petition while a cheetah-keeper walks the animal; a young man watching a princess from a distance; three women visiting an ascetic; a Mughal ruler watching a dance performance; a harem scene and horseman with a falcon; a Mughal princess writing on a long scroll of paper; a sheikh on an elephant moving towards a couple seated on a carpet out in the open; and so on.

In the rendering, this painter’s women may be much bulkier than the svelte Mughal princesses in the original, and the stances of his characters might be ungainly, but the style is self-consciously Mughal. The tones are pastel; there are no cast shadows; there is no light and shade. True, the painter brings in perspective in the structures he introduces; the treatment of nature is also reminiscent of the then current European manner. But one is left with little doubt that he aims at building upon whatever he had seen in, or learnt from, the Mughal originals on the walls.

Except, of course, when he decided, occasionally, to take off on his own, as in the panel showing "Timur on an outdoor throne". Here, the prime ancestor of the Mughal dynasty sits on a curiously shaped throne with a long marble slab at the back, dressed in white, holding a posy of flowers and wearing spectacles much like an attendant, who peers from behind the throne to look at his king, and the courtier carrying a two-pointed flag.

It is all a bit outlandish, if not bizarre. One does not know where he got this strange iconography from. Is it wit at work, one wonders? Or a dream image? And one also wonders what the Mughals in India — painters or patrons — would have thought of a work like this.

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