European influences played a very significant role in the development of Mughal art. The very first paintings to reach the Mughal court were large oil
paintings of Mother Mary. Akbar was the first Indian ruler to show interest in European art and thus invited Jesuits priests of Goa to teach him Christianity. That Mission presented him a ‘Polygot Bible’. After that European pictures became fashionable at the Mughal court adorning its various walls and pavilions.

Christian Influence under Akbar :

• The emperor was impressed by prints from the west and he ordered his painter to examine them, draw inspiration from them. Several of the artists, like Daswanth, developed a sense of spatial depth and a method of figural modelling based on studying European prints.
• Akbar sent an envoy to Goa with a Farman asking the Jesuit missionaries to come to Fatehpur Sikri. Among the gifts the missionaries offered the emperor was ‘Royal Polyglot Bible’. Titles pages of this bible were engraved by Flemish artists. Seduced by these European objects, Akbar ordered copies of gold and ivory crucifixes to be made for him. He also asked the artists to reproduce the engravings of religious subjects used by the Jesuits to study European style and technique.
• Such contact motivated court painters to further glorify the grandeur of Mughal monarchs. This approach found its fullest expression in the seventeenth century, during the reigns of Akbar’s successors, Jahangir and Shahjahan.

Influence under Jahangir :

During the reign of Jahangir, after 1615 when the English embassy arrived many secular pictures made their appearance in the court. European made the Emperor’s throne in gold & silver.

• Animal symbolism & complex symbolic representations were skillfully adapted by Mughal artists with the goats & oxen as favourite symbols for peace guaranteed by the just rule of the Moghul.
• Under the new traditions, the emperor was represented in “company of Christian pictures” in two main ways: as rendering of a real scene (e.g. Jahangir in durbar with picture of Virgin above his head) and where both the emperor and the sacred person are depicted in same level of reality (e.g. Jahangir & Christ appearing in respective windows of same building).
• A clear European influence was the depiction of angels, birds and stars in wall paintings, like those in the Lahore fort.

Influence under Shah Jahan :

• European influence was seen in the Jharokha painting of Shah Jahan, where realism was made used.
• The Mughal surrounded themselves with Christian symbols to enhance their aura a Semi-Divinely Rulers of the Bible.
• The first title page of the polyglot Bible showing an ox , lion , wolf and sheep lying down under the ‘Rule of Messiah’ had a great impact on the representations of Jahangir and Shah Jahan . It became a symbol of the just rule of the Mughal.

However, Christian images were never on the exterior of the buildings, perhaps to avoid offending the religious sentiments of the general public.