Bahram Mirza Album

Bahram Mirza playing a sitar. Bahram Mirza Album, circa 1540
Double-page spread with Rostam Killing the White Div; by Kamal ud-Din Behzad, late 15th or early 16th century; and fragment of a Chinese-style drawing of a bird, a butterfly, and flowers, late 15th century

The Bahram Mirza Album is the art collection of the Safavid prince Bahram Mirza Safavi, compiled by Dust Muhammad Haravi between 1543 and 1545.[1][2] Dust Muhammad Haravi was asked to compile this retrospective album of Persian miniature painting by Bahram Mirza, so “that the scattered folios of past and present masters should be brought out of the region of dispersal into the realm of collectedness".[3] Kept in the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul since the second half of the 16th-century, it appears to have had a significant influence on Safavid Iran's perception of a unique Persian artistic style.[4]

Preface by Dust Muhammad (1544)

The Safavid art of the miniature was in many ways a synthesis and an evolution upon the achievements of the previous schools. Dust Muhammad in the 161th century attributed the current state of the art to the foundational work of Ahmad Musa during the Il-Khanate period, while acknowledging the advances made in China and Europe:[5]

The custom of portraiture flourished in the lands of Cathay and the Franks until sharp-penned Mercury scrivened the rescript of rule in the name of Sultan Abusaʿid Khudaybanda. Master Ahmad Musa, who was his father’s pupil, lifted the veil from the face of depiction, and the [style of] depiction that is now current was invented by him.

— Dust Muhammad, introduction to the Bahram Mirza Album (1544).[6][7]

Contents

The Album includes works by various distinguished artists such as Kamal ud-Din Behzad, Ahmad Musa, Abd al-Hayy, Jafar Tabrizi, Sultan Ali Mashhadi, Shah Mahmud Nishapuri, and Anisi.[1]

The double-spread introduction of the album, which is typically devoted to court portraits, features an image of Ali, further emphasizing the Safavids' spiritual heritage from him. In the preface, Ali is referred to as the "first Islamic painter". The album also contains numerous Chinese paintings and a few European paintings, which is not specifically mentioned in the preamble.[8]

Safavid writers and artists most likely learned about the Chinese art from artworks that had arrived in Iran several decades earlier, as there were very few cross-cultural exchanges of art items between China and Iran during the reign of Shah Tahmasp I (r. 1524–1576).[9]

References

  1. ^ a b Mahdavi & Mayani 2019.
  2. ^ Weis 2020, pp. 64–65 "...the king’s brother Bahram mirza (1517–49),27 the owner of the eponymous album on which this essay focuses. According to dust Muhammad b. Sulayman Haravi (fl. ca. 1511–64), the album’s compiler and author of the preface,28 (...) Note 28. as has been made clear by Chahryar adle, dūst muḥammad ibn sulaymān Haravī (fl. ca. 1511–64) is not to be confused with the contemporary painter Dūst Muḥammad Muṣavvir, also known as Dūst-i Divāna; see Chahryar adle, “les artistes nommés Dust-Mohammad au xvie siècle,” Studia Iranica 22 (1993): 219–96.}}
  3. ^ Weis 2020, pp. 64 "Both authors highlight Dust Muhammad’s humbly formulated claim to have taken on the task, as requested by Bahram mirza, “that the scattered folios of past and present masters should be brought out of the region of dispersal into the realm of collectedness."
  4. ^ Weis 2020, p. 65.
  5. ^ Sims, Eleanor; Marshak, Boris Ilʹich; Grube, Ernst J. (1 January 2002). Peerless Images: Persian Painting and Its Sources. Yale University Press. p. 262. ISBN 978-0-300-09038-3.
  6. ^ Sims, Eleanor; Marshak, Boris Ilʹich; Grube, Ernst J. (1 January 2002). Peerless Images: Persian Painting and Its Sources. Yale University Press. p. 262. ISBN 978-0-300-09038-3.
  7. ^ Album prefaces and other documents on the history of calligraphers and painters (Paperback [edition] ed.). Leiden Boston: Brill. 2014. pp. 12–13. ISBN 978-90-04-11961-1.
  8. ^ Weis 2020, p. 92.
  9. ^ Weis 2020, p. 63.

Sources

External sources

allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahram_Mirza_Album