Monthly Archives: December 2014

Mir Alī Shīr Navā’ī also known as Nizām-al-Din ʿAlī-Shīr Herawī  (1441 – 1501) was a Central Asian Turkic politician, mystic, linguist, painter, and poet. He was the greatest representative of Chagatai language. He significantly contributed to the development of the Uzbek language and is widely considered to be the founder of Uzbek literature.  He was generally known by his pen name Navā’ī.

Mīr Alī Shīr served as a public administrator and adviser to his sultan, Husayn Bayqarah. He was also a builder who is reported to have founded, restored, or endowed many mosques, madrasas, libraries, hospitals, caravanserais and other institutions in Khorasan. Among his most famous constructions were the mausoleum of the 13th-century Persian mystic poet, Farid al-Din Attar, in Nishapur.

Moreover, he was a promoter and patron of scholarship and arts and letters, a prolific writer, a musician, a composer, a calligrapher, a painter and sculptor. He was responsible for a number of illustrated books published at the time in which the earliest existing examples of the newly emerging style of Persian miniature can be found – including some attributed to him although we do not know which ones are actually done by him – probably some which appear in his own Divan.

Kamāl ud-Dīn Behzād[ (1450 –  1535) was a miniaturist and illustrator.

Behzad was born, lived and worked in Herat, Afghanistan under the Timurids, and later in Tabriz under the Safavid dynasty.  An orphan, he was raised by the prominent painter Mirak Naqqash, and was a protégé of Mir Ali Shir Nava’i. His major patrons in Herat were the Timurid sultan Husayn Bayqarah (ruled 1469 – 1506) and other amirs in his circle. After the fall of the Timurids, he was employed by Shah Ismail I Safavi in Tabriz, where, as director of the royal atelier, he had a decisive impact on the development of later Safavid painting. Behzad died in 1535 in Tabriz.

Persian painting of the period frequently uses an arrangement of geometric architectural elements as the structural or compositional context in which the figures are arranged. Behzad stretches that compositional device in a couple ways. One is that he often uses open, unpatterned empty areas around which action moves. Also he pins his compositions to the floating eye of the observer giving an  quirky organic illusion of flow. The gestures of figures and objects are not only uniquely natural, expressive and active, they are arranged to keep moving the eye throughout the picture plane.

Behzad’s most famous works include “pages from Sa’di’s Bustan, 1488, and paintings from the British Library’s Nizami manuscript of 1494-95 – particularly scenes from Layla and Majnun and the Haft Paykar. The attribution of specific paintings to Behzad himself is often problematic but the majority of works commonly attributed to him date from 1488 to 1495.

Sultan Muhammad was a Persian painter, calligrapher and art historian. His exact date of birth and death are not known. He was born in Herat in the late 15th century. He was a disciple of Kamāl ud-Dīn Behzād. Prince Bahram Mirza first spotted his talent and invited him to work in his studio. By early 1520 Sultan Muhammad with Behzad moved from Herat to Tabriz. After the death of Shah Ismail I, he remained in the service of Shah Tahmasp I, taking part in the illustration of the famous “Shahnameh”.

In the late 1530s he worked at the court of the ruler of Kabul, Kamran Mirza, brother of Mughal emperor Humayun. In 1555, and at the invitation of the Emperor, he traveled to India. Sultan Muhammad is known as the author of an essay on Persian calligraphers and artists (1544-45). His writing provides a clear allusion to the existence of a religious ban for images of living beings, and at the same time on the relativity of this prohibition.

Mir Musavvir (- 1555) was an illustrator and painter.

Mir Musavvir was born in either Termez or Badakhshan in the late 15th century. According to the contemporary chronicler Dust Muhammad, he and Aqa Mirak worked together closely in service to the Safavid royal library who did wall paintings for the palace of Prince Sam Mirza and illustrations for royal manuscripts of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (‘Book of kings’) and Nizami’s Khamsa (‘Five poems’).  “Manuchihr Enthroned” of the Shahnameh is signed on a courtier’s turban, and a verse couplet written in the iwan of Nushirwan and the Owls, made for the Shah between 1539 and 1543, says that it was penned by Mir Musavvir in 1539-40. A portrait of the steward Sarkhan Beg is also inscribed as his work.

It is known that his speciality was big scenes with many figures, although he did portraits and individual character drawings too.

Mir Seyyed Ali (1510–1572) was a Persian illustrator and painter who, together with his fellow countryman Abd-uṣ-Ṣamad (Mirza Ali), emigrated to India and helped to found the Mughal school of painting.

Born in Tabriz, Mir Seyyed Ali was the son of artist Mir Musavvir. Historian and chronicler Qazi Ahmed said that the son was more talented than his father, but the impact of Mir Musavvir did influence his work. Modern research suggests that at a young age Mir Sayyid Ali took part in the illustration of the famous “Shahnameh” created in 1525–35 for the years of the Shah Tahmasp I (1514–1576). The manuscript was once embroidered, and individual sheets of it went to different museums and collections. Seyed Ali’s hand in it are attributed to two miniatures.

The next step was his involvement in the creation of illustrations for the famous manuscript of Nizami’s Khamsa (‘Five poems’) created by the best artists of the Shah kitabhane in 1539–43 by order of Shah Tahmasp. Of the 14 miniatures his brush is credited with four, among them “Layla and Majnun”, which bears the signature of the artist. The period around 1540, contains two remarkable works of the master: a picture of the elegant young man holding a letter disclosed, and a diptych (double frontispiece) for Nizami’s Khamsa with “nomad camp of nomads” on one sheet and “Evening Life Palace” on the other.

In India He and ʿAbd-uṣ-Ṣamad instructed the artists of the imperial atelier, most of them Indians, and superintended the production of the giant “miniatures” illustrating the Dāstān-e Amīr Ḥamzeh (“Stories of Amīr Ḥamzeh”), a colossal undertaking that consisted of some 1,400 paintings, each of unusually large size. The few of his paintings that have survived were for the most part painted before his arrival in India. They are sufficient, however, to denote him as a highly gifted painter, wielding an unusually delicate brush and possessed of great powers of observation

Aqa Mirak was a painter, purveyor and companion to the Safavid shah Tahmasp I and was well known in contemporary circles. Initially living in Tabriz, he traveled and lived in Mashhad between 1555 and 1565, and Qazvin from 1565 until his death.

The contemporary chronicler Dust Muhammad mentioned that Aqa Mirak along with Mir Musavvir did wall paintings for Prince Sam Mirza’s palace in Tabriz and illustrations for royal manuscripts of Firdawsi’s Shahnameh (‘Book of kings’) and Nizami’s Khamsa (‘Five poems’). Qazi Ahmad wrote that Aqa Mirak “had no peer in artistic design and was an incomparable painter, very clever, enamoured of his art, a bon vivant, an intimate [of the Shah] and a sage”. A manuscript of the Khamsa done between 1539 and 1543 has four illustrations bearing attributions to Aqa Mirak.

Works ascribed to a youthful period in the 1520s have tautly composed landscapes inhabited by a few large-scale figures. A transitional period in the early 1530s was followed by mature works produced from the late 1530s to c. 1555, in which the compositions are more complex and the coloring more subtle.

Farrukh Beg (1545 – 1615) was a Persian born Mughal painter who served in the court of Mirza Muhammad Hakim before working directly for Mughal Emperor Akbar. He is one of a number of artists who took the traditions of the Persian miniature to form that of the Mughal miniature, like Abd al-Samad.

He was born in Iran and belonged to the Kalmyk sect and received training in Khurasan. He was there until 1585 with artists who had been in the atelier of Ibrahim Mirza. He started working in Kabul under Muhammad Hakim, half brother of emperor Akbar. And after the death of Hakim, he moved to Delhi in December 1585. He took part in Kandhahar campaign of Akbar. He worked on many paintings for Mughal royalty between 1585 and 1590.

He was in the Deccan until 1608 and this shows the style he used when he returned to the court of Jahangir in Mughal India. His most noted work was under Jahangir called as the Gulshan Album. It is among the finest Mughal paintings. It is at the Golestan Library in Tehran.

Abd al-Samad or Khwaja Abdus Samad, known as Mirza Ali, was a 16th-century painter of Persian miniatures who together with Mīr Sayyid Alī moved to India and became one of the founding masters of the Mughal miniature tradition, and later the holder of a number of senior administrative roles. He is sometimes referred to as “of Shiraz”. Samad’s career under the Mughals, from about 1550 to 1595, is relatively well documented, and a number of paintings are attributed to him from this period. From about 1572 he headed the imperial workshop of the Emperor Akbar.

It has recently been contended by a leading specialist, Barbara Brend, that Samad is the same person as Mirza Ali, a Persian artist whose documented career seems to end at the same time as Abd al-Samad appears working for the Mughals. These say that he was the son of another leading artist of the court workshop, Sultan Muhammed, and so grew up in the milieu of the court atelier, and was a distinguished painter. Kamal of Tabriz is recorded as a pupil of his.

Reza Abbasi, (1565–1635) was the leading Persian miniaturist of the Isfahan School during the later Safavid period, spending most of his career working for Shah Abbas I. He is considered to be the last great master of the Persian miniature.

Unlike most earlier Persian artists, he typically signed his work, often giving dates and other details as well. His first dated drawing is from 1601. His speciality was the single miniature for the albums or of private collectors, typically showing one or two figures with a lightly drawn garden background. The most typical have at least some colour in the figures, though not in the background; later works tend to have less colour. The style he pioneered remained influential on subsequent generations of Persian painters; several pupils were prominent artists, including Mu’in, who painted his portrait many decades later as well as Reza’s son, Muhammed Shafi Abbasi.

Muin Musavvir (1638–1697) was a Persian painter. He is considered as one of the most famous miniaturist of the Safavid period. He received his training from Reza Abbasi who pioneered Persian miniaturist of the Isfahan School at that time.

Muin was born in Isfahan and probably spent all of his life in this city. He is notable as a master in illustration paintings specially figures of people. Besides, His compositions in depicting of banquet and battle subjects are well known. Muin created his unique style that was exploited from Isfahan conditions in that era and was distinguishable from Chinese and Mughul style. He was specialist in illuminated manuscript and border decorating and he illustrated animals and landscapes and other Aqa Mirak styles with significant virtuosity. Muin Mostly used watercolor in his painting and remained faithful to Isfahan school and Reza Abbasi.

Muin Musavvir was one of the pioneers among Iranian artist who signed his works and provided dates and details for his manuscripts.

Mirza Baba (late 18th century and early 19th) was a Persian painter. He was employed by the Qajar family at Astarabad, as indicated by a signed drawing of a dragon and phoenix (1788-9). After Agha Muhammad ascended the  throne, Mirza Baba worked at the Qajar court in Tehran in a wide variety of  materials, techniques and scales.

His oil portrait (1789-90; Tehran, Nigaristan  Mus.) of the Sasanian king Hurmuzd IV (AD 579-90) probably belonged  to a series of historical portraits, for Mirza Baba painted a second series a  decade later. One of the two surviving paintings from the later series (Tehran,  A. H. Ibtihaj priv. col.) shows the Saljuq ruler Malikshah (1072-92)  with his two ministers. Other early works by Mirza Baba include a still-life  with pomegranates, watermelon and flowers (1793-4; Tehran, Nigaristan Mus.) and  an arched panel showing Shirin Visiting Farhad as He Carves Mt Bisitun (1793-4; priv. col., see Treasures of Islam, no. 184). Many of these  early oil paintings follow the style set by Muhammad Sadiq.

Mihr ‘Ali (1795 – post 1830) was one of the great royal painters of the Persian court during the reign of Fat’h Ali Shah Qajar, and is regarded as the most notable Persian portraitist of the early part of his reign.

Mihr ‘Ali’s chief skill was his ability to capture the portrait-sitter’s grandeur and power, and as such he became a favourite painter of the Shah. Mihr ‘Ali produced at least ten full-size oil paintings of Fat’h Ali Shah, one of the earliest of which was probably sent as a present to the amirs of Sind in 1800. A further portrait, of the Shah enthroned, was sent to Napoleon. Mihr Ali’s finest portrait is an 1813–4 work, regarded by some as one of the finest Persian oil painting in existence. It shows a full-length portrait of the King wearing a gold brocade robe and a royal crown, holding a jewelled staff.

Fat’h Ali Shah commissioned great numbers of lifesize portraits of himself and his sons, works which formed the backdrop to court ceremonies. The works, painted by Mihr ‘Ali and his predecessor as court painter, Mirza Baba, portrayed Fat’h Ali Shah in his many stately roles, and were intended to show his power as a ruler rather than to be realistic portraits. As a result, the works are heavily stylised, are painted in rich, deep tones, and are filled with symbols of power.