To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Iran, the Shanghai Museum of Art is hosting a special exhibition: The Charm of Persia – An Exhibition of Iranian Miniature Paintings. This is also the first time that the art of miniature painting in Iran has been exhibited on a large scale in Shanghai.
Speaking of miniature painting, if you have read the most widely known work of the Nobel Prize winner and Turkish novelist Pamuk, "My Name Is Red", you will remember that the theme of the novel revolves around the essence and meaning of the ancient art of miniature painting. In the book, the Ottoman miniature painters looked up to and followed the masters of Persian miniature painting and the rules of painting style they set. In this exhibition, you can see these treasures from the National Museum of Malik in Iran, the Forty Pillars Palace in Iran, and the Reza Abbas Miniature Painting Museum in Iran, which is also their first appearance abroad.
What is Persian miniature painting? It is a small painting depicted with delicate brushes, originally it was a decoration of manuscripts, used as an edge of scriptures or as an illustration of a collection of legends and stories, and later, it was also used on title pages, badges, boxes, jewelry, as decoration. From the 13th to the 17th century AD, it was widely popular within the territory of Iranian rule at the time and on geographical borders influenced by Persian culture, including Ottoman Turkey and Mughal India.
The miniature paintings range from myths, fables, heroic legends, and imperial stories, as Pamuk describes: Hoslu peeks into Celine's bath in the moonlight; the hero Rustam cuts off the monster's head only to find out that it is his son; on the eve of a battle, Alexander comes to the forest to use birds to divinate the outcome of the war... In addition, the worldly themes of court banquets, the hunting of nobles, and the dating of couples were also deeply loved by the people of the time.
To understand Persian miniature painting, you need to know the following keywords:
Chinese influence
As a Chinese, at the first glance of miniature painting, you may feel familiar, in the elegant and intricate ornamentation, landscapes and trees, and even the beautiful and plump faces of the characters and slender and handsome eyes, it is not difficult to find the shadow of Chinese painting.
Pamuk also wrote that the miniature painting has "Chinese clouds curling in the sky", the wall decoration should be "painted in the Chinese style", and the beauty in the painting, her "eyes and mouth must be painted like Chinese beauty, is beautiful", "the beautiful girl as a Chinese is an immutable rule from the East".
Chinese cirrus clouds and fairies by the 16th-century Tabriz school painter Sultan Muhammad.
The wonderful fate of miniature painting and Chinese painting comes from the conquest of Iran by the Mongol Empire in the 13th century. Prior to this, Persian miniature painting was characterized by a single background color or geometric figures of flora and fauna that conformed to local artistic traditions. The successive establishment of the Mongol regimes of the Ilkhanate and the Timurid Dynasty allowed Chinese art, perhaps even Chinese artists, to be introduced to Persia. The nomadic traditions of the Mongols also made easy-to-carry picture books more popular.
Rustin, asleep, is rich in Chinese decorative landscape paintings.
Among the nutrients that Persian miniature painting draws from Chinese art, it mainly includes scattered perspective, as well as various ornaments in decorative arts such as textiles and ceramics, such as clouds and dragon patterns, and of course, Chinese-style beauty images.
What is particularly interesting is that the painters also depict the beasts of Persian mythology in the style of The Chinese unicorns, phoenixes, cats and other beasts, but they are more aggressive in the miniature paintings, often killing each other or biting the beasts in nature.
"Wild Donkey" Bahram V slays the dragon, illustration of Felddosi's "The Age of Kings", now in the Museum of the Forty Pillars Palace in Iran
Tabriz School
In 1258, the Ilkhanate was established as the capital of Tabriz, and Persian miniature painting began to be influenced by the East and flourished, forming the Tabriz school. With its light brushstrokes and soft colours, it begins to use perspective to create a sense of space. Later, after the establishment of the Safavid dynasty, the master of the Herat school, Behzad, came to Tabriz, and the style of the Tabriz school was deeply influenced by it and changed. During this period, the most famous work of the Tabriz school of painting was born, the illustrations made by the royal academy of painting at that time for the great Persian poet Ferdosi's "Book of Kings". Today, they are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Illustration of the Book of Kings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Herat School of Painting
During the Timurid dynasty, the historic city of Herat in western Afghanistan ushered in its most glorious era. Timur's son moved the capital from Samarkand to Herat, and many artists from Persia and Afghanistan came to the new capital with the court, where science and culture flourished, and the flourishing of bookmaking led to the peak of miniature painting as illustration, and the Herat school was born.
Herat School of Painting, Illustrations from the Quran, Yusuf and Zuleka
The painters of the Herat school paid special attention to composition and liked to deal with color in a gradient way. The representative of this school of painting is the painter Behzād, who is mentioned repeatedly in "My Name is Red". He lived from the late 15th to the early 16th century and served as dean of the Herat Academy, sponsored by the Timurid royal family. After the establishment of the Safavid dynasty, he moved to Tabriz and became the head of the Royal Library.
The "Three Chinese Saints" section of the Herat school of painting can be seen in the treatment of the color of the sky.
Traditional miniature painting will fill the space of the picture with geometric figures or plant patterns, but Behzard prefers to use blank space to highlight the main body of the picture, in addition, he is also better at using light and shadow to shape the drama of the picture, and the characters are more realistic and personal, no longer symbolic characters.
Figures painted by Behzard
Reza Abbas
If you go to the Iranian bazaar to pick out miniature reproductions, Reza Abbas will be a frequently seen name. He was so important to the art of miniature painting that a museum in Iran named it after him.
Abbas lived from the late 16th century to the early 17th century and spent most of his career working for Abbas I. He was a representative of the Most important school of Persian miniature painting at the end of the period, the Isfahan School. Compared with myths, legends and historical stories, he preferred to create naturalistic themes and portraits, which were also very popular in Iran at that time.
Reza Abbas's masterpiece "Lover" is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
His characters, whether they are well-dressed aristocratic youths, or elegant women, and young lovers, their faces are delicate and delicate, often appearing in the simple and beautiful garden background. They are also often fashionable, from their rich folds, exquisite clothing patterns, lazy posture, reflecting the worldly rich, elegant atmosphere. In addition, Abbas's paintings are lightly colored, highlighting the sense of lines rather than the richness of the scenes, which is rarely seen in persian miniature paintings in the past.
"Lady with mirror"
In this exhibition, there are several masterpieces from the Reza Abbas Museum in Tehran.
Abbas's work "The Lady in the Fur Hat" on display
Persian poetry
Beginning around the 14th century AD, painters began illustrating Manuscripts of Persian poetry, the most popular of which was the Epic Book of Kings by the Persian poet Ferdosi in the 10th century AD. A monument to the history and historiography of Persian literature, the work tells the story of Persian kings and heroes of the late Sassanid dynasty in beautiful terms until the reign of Khosrau II in the 7th century AD.
Countless painters have painted the story of the Chronicle of kings, the most famous of which is the aforementioned masterpiece of the Tabriz school of painting, the Chronicle of Kings. In addition, the illustrated manuscript of the Book of Kings, ordered by prince Baysonghor Mirza of the Timurid dynasty, as a representative of the Herat school, is currently in the collection of the Gulestan Palace Museum in Iran.
Mirza ordered an illustration of the Chronicles of kings of the Herat school
Illustrations of the Chronicles of kings from the Ilkhanate period on display
Nizami Ganjavi was a poet active in the 12th century, whose masterpiece is the long narrative poem "Five Volumes of Poetry", most of which is about love, and two of which are based on Ferdosi's "Chronicles of kings", these romantic, legendary love stories have become the subject of the painters' enthusiasm. In "My Name Is Red", the "murderer" is impressed by an illustration that reflects the love story of Hoslu and Celine, and he specifically mentions that it is "Nezami's version, not Felddosi's".
Illustration for Nezami's poem "Hoslu and Celine"
Illustrations for Sadie's Orchard during the Safavid period
The 13th-century Persian poet Saadi Shiraz has been called "the greatest figure in classical Persian literature" and "one of the four pillars that underpin the edifice of Persian literature", and his masterpieces include The Garden of the Rose and the Orchard of Sadie, as well as extensively created subjects of miniature paintings, the most famous of which is the illustration by Behzard for The Orchard of sadie in 1489, which is now preserved in the National Library of Cairo.
The Charm of Persia - An Exhibition of Iranian Miniature Paintings