How the kārkhāna ships
a hundred painters at once

Tabriz masters compose the cartoon; Rajput painters lay down lapis, malachite and vermilion — a single folio carries both lineages without a seam.

Saffron page-ground is laid first, then sky, then architecture, then bodies, then portraits — the folio is built like a fresco, in seven painterly passes.

Faces alone travel through the workshop to the chief portraitist — Basawan, Abu'l Hasan, or Bichitr — so every courtier is recognisably himself, not a type.

Halo, cloud, throne-rail and margin filigree are burnished in 22-karat leaf after every pigment has cured — the folio is dated only when the gold answers candlelight.