"[Mughal court painting...] an art that developed so fast, had Persia, India, and Europe to draw on...why didn’t it do more? Why did this art, so human in the beginning, in the late sixteenth century, and so full of possibility, exhaust itself so quickly by the end of the seventeenth? The answer can be inferred from Imperial Mughal Painting. The art was limited by the civilization, by an idea of the world in which men were born only to obey the rules - Islam was always in the wings, waiting to resimplify and stifle. The art was limited by the despotism that went with this idea, the despotism that dealt only in power and glory but could create no nation. The art was limited by the ignorance and absurd conceit of a court dazzled by its own glitter. It shows in the paintings..."