The history of Deccani miniature painting can largely be constructed from the late sixteenth century until the 1680s — the time when the Mughals conquered the Deccan. The Deccani style of painting has been in Indo-Persian art for a long time. It was considered to be Middle Eastern, Safavid, Persian, Turkish and even Mughal in origin. Art historians acknowledged its uniqueness but failed to recognise it as a full-fledged school which was sustained by a class of rulers, who had their peculiar political and cultural vision. They hired and nurtured artists and commissioned works that enhanced their artistic sensibilities and specific requirements of governance in their kingdoms.

The art of portraiture and representation of historical and religious figures are seen elsewhere in other contemporary schools of painting. Mughal portraiture, in this sense, was not wholly unique as we see such artistic inclinations in the Safavid and Ottoman Schools of Painting. The highly documentary nature of portraits is a singularly unique development seen extensively in Asian Islamic art as also in Mughal art in India. The kingdoms of Bijapur, Golconda and Ahmadnagar developed highly sophisticated and distinct schools of court painting. Its unique sensuality and intense colours have a strong affinity to regional aesthetics. The school preferred dense composition and created an aura of romance, which invariably expressed itself in an idiom that was eloquently natural and vivid. The earliest examples of Deccani painting can be found in a volume of poems celebrating the reign of Hussain Nizam Shah of Ahmednagar, and while the twelve miniatures that depict battle scenes are of no artistic interest, those depicting the queen and her marriage delight us with gorgeous colours and sensuous lines. The woman represented in it belongs to the northern tradition of pre-Mughal painting, which was flourishing especially in Malwa and Ahmednagar during this time. The women wear a modified northern costume with a choli (bodice) and long braided pigtails; only a long scarf passing around the hips in a Southern fashion.