This watercolour is strongly reminiscent of sketches in the Iran Bastan Museum, where the head is finely painted but the robes remain hazy. It is possible that they were studies for the huge murals in the Nizamiyya Palace.

The face is very probably by Sani al-Mulk (Abu'l-Hasan Ghaffari). A comparable portrait by him where the face is finely painted but the body sketchy was exhibited in Geneva (Falk, T. (Ed.): Treasures of Islam, Geneva 1985, pp.200-201) and a portrait by Ghaffari depicting the face alone is in the British Museum (Robinson, B.W.: Persian Drawings, Boston 1965, p.125).