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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
Almost nothing of monumental painting in the Islamic world survives. Speculation about its existence and its original appearance has long taken the place of the study of existing monuments. One consoled oneself with the consideration that at least part of the immense loss of monumental Islamic painting is compensated for by the fact that the surviving miniature paintings--or where those are lacking, paintings on pottery, glass, and ivory--in all likelihood reflect both in style and iconography the destroyed wall-paintings which had decorated the palaces of the rulers, princes, and wealthy.
This assumption was supported by the close correspondance between the few fragments of wall-painting surviving from the Seljuq period in Iran and the mina'i and lustre-painted potteries of the time. It was finally substantiated by the discovery of the Varqah va Gulshah manuscript in Istanbul, illustrated with paintings in a style corresponding closely to both the surviving fragments of wall-paintings and the painted potteries of the period.
1. The paintings of Qusayr Amra form, to a degree, an exception as enough of them has survived to allow, at least in parts, a reconstruction of the complete decorative program; but recent restoration work seems to indicate that a large part of what has been recorded by Musil does not belong to the original period of the building and its decoration but to a later stage of “restoration” and repainting. I owe this information to my friend, Professor John Carswell of the American University in Beirut. Of the wall-paintings in Samarra not enough has survived, especially as far as upper wall zones and vaults are concerned to allow any kind of reconstruction. All other surviving wall-paintings consist of tiny unconnected fragments which give no idea as to their relation to the architectural interiors they decorated.
2. A first notice of these wall decorations, discovered by Dr. B. Shirazi of the Monument Service of Isfahan, who has agreed to collaborate in a monographic publication of this exceedingly important monument, was given by Ingeborg Luschey-Schmeisser in Archaeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran N.F. II (1969), pp. 183-92, pls. 69-81, and ibid., V (1972), pp. 309-14, pls. 78-82; see also ibid., II (1969), pp. 193-96, pl. 82 (Gerd Gropp and Saifeddin Nadjmabandi) for the inscription.
3. See D. Wilber, The Architecture of Islamic Iran: The IlKhanid Period (Princeton: 1955), pp. 121-24; also A. Godard, “Isfahan,” Athar-é Iran II (1937), pp. 29-35.
4. All the monuments discussed herein have been treated in the Travaux de Restauration des Monuments Historiques en Iran: Rapports et Etudes Preliminaires Editées par G. Zander (Rome: 1968), plan of the Chihil Sutūn on p. 331; inscriptions on the monuments are published in L. Honarfar, The Treasure of the Historical Monuments of Isfahan (Isfahan: 1971).
5. See note 2 for references.
6. See Godard, p. 29 for a plan of the shrine.
7. For the full text of the inscriptions, see Honarfar, pp. 557-74; see also the same writer's Historical Monuments of Isfahan (Tehran: 1967), pp. 96-106, especially pp. 96-97, where the date of completion is given as 1647.
8. The Six Voyages of John Baptista Tavernier … Finished in the Year 1670 (London: 1678), pp. 177-78, where the ambassador is not named; Honarfar in the last-named work refers to him as “Nāḍir Muḥammad Khān, King of Turkestan,” p. 100.
9. Mention should be made at this point of two large oil paintings on canvas, representing a man and a woman dressed in clothing of the time of Shāh ᶜAbbās II, which were sold at auction at Christie's in London on 11 July 1974, lots 42 and 43. While they do not seem to be of the quality of the large paintings on the walls of the Chihil Sutūn, they are nevertheless interesting in light of the other European aspects of the style of the large paintings in this palace.
10. See B.W. Robinson, “Two Manuscripts of the Shahnama in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle—II: MS Holmes 151 (A/6),” Burlington Magazine (March 1968), pp. 133-38; and the same author's article on the Cochran Shāh-nāmah in Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ed. R. Ettinghausen (n. p., 1972).
11. BWG, p. 82.
12. Robert Skelton would suggest that the Indian elements in much of Safavid painting in the second half of the seventeenth century can be explained by the fact that a number of important artists of the period, Muḥammad Zaman and ᶜAlī Qulī Jabbahdar among them, went to Kashmir and worked in the service of Aurangzib in the 1660's. His evidence lies in the existence of copies of Mughal compositions of about 1630 found in an album in the Metropolitan Museum, one of which is signed by Muḥammad Zaman “in the seventh (regnal) year.” The album is 30.95.174; the suggestion first made at the VIth International Congress of Persian Art and Archaeology in Oxford in 1972.
