The first critical study to be published on Mughal pictorial hybridity, this book investigates the workings of the diverse creative forces that underpinned the formation of the Mughal painting. Valerie Gonzalez here explores - with the updated methodology of art criticism - the processes of cross-fertilization between the Indo-Persianate legacy, the Persian models imported after 1555 and the influx of European art that have brought about a unique Indo-Islamic pictorial metaphysics characterized by a positivist mimetic order distinct from the idealistic Persian pictoriality.