We do know about the relationship between Britain and India, but not much about the one between the Netherlands and India," professor Jos Gommans remarks, as we stand outside the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya-s CSMVS Special Exhibition Gallery. Gommans, chair of colonial and global history at Leiden University, has co-curated an exhibition with Vandana Prapanna, the senior curator of the Indian Miniature Paintings section at the city museum — it-s both fascinating and the first of its kind.

"The miniature artist Kesu Das worked under both emperor Akbar and Jahangir.The atmosphere painted in Elephant and rider c. 1580-1590 AD, shows that Das was experimenting with and deriving from European art," Prapanna explains. Right Jahangir distributing Alms at the Dargah of Ajmer c. 1620 AD from the Muraqqa of Nana Phadnis depicts how Mughal painters drew from the perspective and distant landscape that was typical to European art, which according to Prapanna, Jahangir encouraged. Pics/Suresh Karkera