This small fall-front writing cabinet (escritório in Portuguese),constructed from teak (Tectona grandis) and painted in brightlycoloured shellac and gold, was likely made in Gujarat around theturn of the seventeenth century, possibly for the Mughal court.All sides of the cabinet, except the underside, are intricatelypainted in vivid colours, as must have been both sides of thenow-missing fall-front. Its copper-alloy fittings include two sidehandles and drawer pulls.Reminiscent of contemporary Gujarati book painting—somewhat Persianate in style and likely inspired by Mughalpaintings produced at imperial and regional courts—the scenesvary in iconography; yet all share the same teak ground, left blank,sprinkled with floral motifs and stylised flowers, including Chineseinspiredlotus blossoms.1 The shellac decoration is extremely thinand was applied directly to the teak, allowing the wavy grain ofthe boards used in the cabinet’s construction to show; as a result,that much of it has not survived. Recent painstaking conservation and restoration of the cabinet have nonetheless revealed much ofthe iconography, despite the substantial losses.The writing cabinet is fitted with six drawers arranged inthree tiers, with a central, square, larger drawer spanning the twolower tiers. The drawer fronts are decorated with brightly paintedbirds highlighted in gold over the teak ground, itself sprinkledwith floral motifs.The top, which, as usual, shows the greatest damage to thedecoration, depicts a garden scene, in which two seated princelyfigures in the centre, seemingly sharing a meal—flanked, it seems,by seated female figures on the right—are attended by their retinue,mostly standing and depicted on the left. The garden is markedby a large hexagonal pond above—the favoured form for gardenpavilions, large seating platforms (takht), and ponds or basins—and the arrangement of the figures is reminiscent of contemporaryMughal painted garden scenes, of which the most significant isan early Mughal painting, now at the British Museum, known as male figures is wearing a type of jama of Rajput origin which wasfavoured during the reigns of Akbar (r. 1556–1605) and Jahangir(r. 1605–1627), the chakdar jama, featuring slits or chak, and withthe hem falling in four points. Although difficult to identify withcertainty given the losses, the scene seems to depict a pause duringa hunt, suggested by the presence of hunting birds of prey—aperegrine falcon (Falco peregrinus), with its typical blue-grey backand barred white underparts, held by one of the standing servants—and by horses placed at the edge of the scene.On one of the sides is a gathering of Hindu ascetics—thosewho renounce worldly pleasures and seek a solitary life outsidesociety—around a tree. The theme of ascetics in the wilderness,popular in Indian painting, also appears in Mughal illustratedbooks and album pages depicting encounters between yogis andthe emperors Babur (r. 1526–1530), Akbar and Jahangir.4 In theclosed posture of a yogi, the principal figure sits on a tiger skin,associated with Shiva, the supreme ascetic. Bearded and with acouple of praying beads (japa-mala) around his neck, he wears anorange-red loincloth (kaupina or guhyacchada) in contrast with hisbluish skin tone—like that of his three companions—covered insacred ash (vibhuti or bhasma), and styles his long hair in a largecoil (jata) over his head (jatajuta or jatamukuta). Behind him standsa young ascetic holding a rigid palm-leaf fan; in front of him thereis a kneeling veiled woman in her finery, a princely devotee clad injewellery, with her female servant behind, carrying gifts, likely foodofferings. Both figures wear long ankle-length pleated skirts (gaghra),fitted bodices (choli) and transparent veils (odhani); on their wrists,black pompons possibly to ward off evil. On the upper register, twolong-haired ascetics, one covering his lower body with a cloak, sitdirectly on the ground sprinkled with stylised flowers and leaves.The other side depicts two male figures in contemporaryIranian attire with their characteristic large turbans. From theircourtly dress and jewels—notably the strands of pearls adorningtheir turbans—these are princely figures. As with the larger sceneof the top, the figure on the right, a male youth beautifully dressedin an orange brocaded tunic, holds a peregrine falcon on his glove,facing, in symmetry, an older man sporting a moustache who holdsa long staff. Above, two flying white geese—the bar-headed goose(Anser indicus)—represent the prey about to be hunted.Most intriguing is the large rectangular scene on the backof the cabinet, depicting the Crucifixion. Centre stage is the cross,with the naked, expiring Christ wrapped in a large blue loinclothand wearing a thin necklace; at his feet kneels a female figureclasping the cross, likely Mary Magdalene. To the left of the crosskneels a female figure with hands clasped in devotion and, at thefar edge, a man holding a naked child while pointing to Christ. Onthe right, next to the cross, a standing man and a seated or kneelingwoman (the paint losses make this difficult to determine); alance, of which only the lance head and billowing cloth wrapped.

1 A good example of a contemporary Gujarati illustrated manuscript is the so-called Tularam Bhagavata Purana, painted around 1625–1650 (with later additions), dispersed in many museumand private collections around the globe. See Goetz, Hermann, A New Key to Early Rajput and Indo-Muslim Painting: A Unique Bhagavata Purana (Dasama Skandha) Album from South WesternMarwar, Roopa-Lekha 23.1–2 (1952), pp. 1–16.

2 On this painting, see Canby, Sheila (ed.), Humayun's Garden Party. Princes of the House of Timur and Early Mughal Painting, Bombay, Marg Publications, 1994.

3 On these items of clothing, see Verma, Som Prakash, Art and Material Culture in the Paintings of Akbar’s Court, New Delhi, Vikas Publishing House, 1978, pp. 47–53; Cohen, Steven, ‘Textiles,Dress, and Attire as Depicted in the Albums’, in Wright, Elaine (ed.), Muraqqa’. Imperial Mughal Albums from the Chester Beatty Library (cat.), Alexandria, Virginia, Art Services International,2008, pp. 178–187; and Houghteling, Sylvia, The Art of Cloth in Mughal India, Princeton–Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2022, p. 48.

4 On the iconography of Hindu ascetics in Mughal painting, see Mallinson, James, ‘Nath Yogis and their ‘Amazing Apparel’ in Early Material and Textual Sources’, in Orsini, Francesca(ed.), Objects, Images, Stories. Simon Digby’s Historical Method, London, Oxford University Press, 2022, pp. 65–95.