A stunning catalog of Persian miniature paintings and manuscripts from The al-Sabah Collection, placed in their historical and artistic context

This is a detailed study of the illustrations to Amir Khusrau's Khamsah, in which twenty discourses are followed by a brief parable, and four romances. Amir Khusrau (1253-1325) lived the greater part of adventurous life in Delhi; he composed in Persian, and also in Hindi. From the point of view of manuscript illustration, his most important work is his Khamsah (Quintet'). Khusrau's position as a link between cultures of Persia and India means that the early illustrated copies of the Khamsah have a particular interest. The first extant exemplar is from the Persian area in the late 14th century, but a case can be made that work was probably illustrated earlier in India.

Jewel-like colours, precise execution and virtuoso draughtsmanship characterise the best of Persian miniature painting: the perfect realization of an ideal world.

While the impact of the Persian style is undeniably reflected in most aspects of the art and architecture of Islamic Central Asia, this Perso-Central Asian connection was chiefly formed and articulated by the Euro-American movement of collecting and interpreting the art and material culture of the Persian Islamic world in modern times. This had an enormous impact on the formation of scholarship and connoisseurship in Persian art, for instance, with an attempt to define the characteristics of how the Islamic art of Iran and Central Asia should be viewed and displayed at museums, and how these subjects should be researched in academia. This important historical fact, which has attracted scholarly interest only in recent years, should be treated as a serious subject of research, accepting that the abstract image of Persian art was not a pure creation of Persian civilization, but that it can be the manifestation of particular historical times and charismatic individuals. Attention should therefore be given to various factors that resulted in the shaping of “Persian” imagery across the globe, not only in terms of national ideologies, but also within the context of several protagonists, such as scholars, collectors and dealers, as well as of the objects themselves. This volume brings together Islamic Iranian and Central Asian art experts from diverse disciplinary and professional backgrounds, and intends to offer a novel insight into what is collectively known as Persian art.

Skira.

Over the last forty years, Basil Robinson has established a reputation as a leading authority on the art of Persia. His work on Persian manuscript illumination represents one of the most important contributions made in this century to the study of the development of this pivotal branch of Islamic art, which absorbed the influence of Arab and Chinese painting, and influenced in turn the miniature painting of Mughal India. This first volume concentrates on Persian painting. Seven papers examine the general evolution of painting in Persia from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, "mostly preserved in manuscript illumination, with emphasis on that most characteristic of Persian manuscripts, "the Shah-Nameh, the national epic. Particular attention is paid to the Timurid period and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Four reviews of exhibitions of Persian art follow. Thirteen studies are devoted to a later period, the school of painting that arose under the Qajar rulers, when Persian art flourished in such new and diverse media as oil painting and painted enamels. Vol I Contents: Preface A Survey of Persian Painting 1350-1896 Persian Painting and the National Epic Persian Miniatures and Manuscripts Persian Miniatures of the 16th and 17th Centuries Shah Abbas and the Mughal Ambassador Khan Alam: the Pictorial Record Areas of Controversy in Islamic Painting Book Illustration in Transoxiana: the Timurid Period Some Modern Persian Miniatures Persian Miniatures at the British Museum Persian Painting: A Loan Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum Persian Miniature Painting from Collections in the British Isles Qajar Art: An Introduction The Court Painters of Fath Ali Shah The Amery Collection of Persian Oil Paintings Persian Royal Portraiture and the Qajars Some Thoughts on Qajar Lacquer Qajar Lacquer Persian Lacquer in the Bern Historical Museum Persian Lacquer and the Bern Historical Museum Casket A Pair of Royal Book-Covers A Lacquer Mirror Case of 1854 Qajar Painted Enamels A Royal Qajar Enamel The Tehran Nizami of 1848 and other Qajar Illustrated Books Inde.

In this book, B.W. Robinson traces the development of the different styles of Persian painting during the fifteenth century, and considers a number of the problems and issues involved in establishing a methodology and system of classification for Persian painting of that period. Robinson begins, by way of background, with a review of the schools of Herat and Shiraz up to the middle of the century, and then proceeds to tackle in order the three main fields of controversy: painting under the Turkmans, Timurid paintings in Transoxiana and Timurid painting in India. The uneasy fusion of contrasting characteristics of Herat and Shiraz that resulted in the emergence of Turkman court painting is traced through the origins, development, and branching of the Turkman style into a definitive form. Then the author reviews a branch of the art almost entirely neglected up to now, which he identifies as originating in Transoxiana. Finally he provides a new approach to the study of pre-Mughal Indian painting in Persian style by dividing the material into five stylistic groups.