The Throne of the Great Mogul in Dresden: The Ultimate Artwork of the Baroque

Description

A masterful deciphering of an extraordinary art object, illuminating some of the biggest questions of the eighteenth century The Throne of the Great Mogul (1701–8) is a unique work of European decorative art: an intricate miniature of the court of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb depicted during the emperor’s birthday celebrations. It was created by the jeweler Johann Melchior Dinglinger in Dresden and purchased by the Saxon prince Augustus the Strong for an enormous sum. Constructed like a theatrical set made of gold, silver, thousands of gemstones, and amazing enamel work, it consists of 164 pieces that together tell a detailed story. Why did Dinglinger invest so much time and effort in making this piece? Why did Augustus, in the midst of a political and financial crisis, purchase it? And why did the jeweler secrete in it messages wholly unrelated to the prince or to the Great Mogul? In answering these questions, Dror Wahrman, while shifting scales from microhistory to global history, opens a window onto major historical themes of the period: the nature of European absolutism, the princely politics of the Holy Roman Empire, the changing meaning of art in the West, the surprising emergence of a cross-continental lexicon of rulership shared across the Eastern Hemisphere, and the enactment in jewels and gold of quirky contemporary theories about the global history of religion. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents List of Illustrations Note on Names and Dates Acknowledgments Introduction: The Prince, the Jeweler, and the Mogul 1. Mirrors (or, Fantasies of Absolute Rule) 2. Crowns (or, The Men Who Would Be Kings) 3. Thrones (or, The Prince, the Mogul, and Cultural Mixing) 4. Rulers (or, When the Age of Absolutism Met the First Age of Globalism) 5. Scales (or, Figuring Miniatures in Princely Courts) 6. Miniatures (or, The Early Modern Moment of the Micro-Object) 7. Magi (or, Miniatures Between Sacrality and Play) 8. Hands (and Frogs and Pyramids) 9. Gods (or, The Global History of Pagan Religion) 10. Scripts (or, Framing the Mogul in the Global History of Writing) 11. Uniqueness (or, Accounting for the Unaccountable) 12. Epilogue: The Prince, the Alchemist, and the Emperor of China (or, How Dinglinger and the Großmogul Lost the Battle with Modernity) Notes Photographic Credits Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Z