‘And also We made the son of Mary and his mother a sign to mankind, and gave them a shelter on a peaceful hillside watered by a fresh spring.’
(Quran 23:50)Mary (Mariam) and Jesus (Isa) are important figures in Islam. This painting is a colour reinterpretation by a Mughal artist of ‘Madonna by the Tree’, an engraving of 1513 by the German artist Albrecht Dürer. In the Dürer original the background is filled by an expanse of water, which the Mughal painter has swapped for a tree-covered hill, also replacing the rocky foreground with a small stream.