ASCRIBED TO RIZA 'ABBASI (CIRCA 1565-1635 AD), SAFAVID IRAN, DATED AH 1035/1625-26 AD

This portrait of a seated princess is copied after an original formerly in the collection of Louis J. Cartier and now in the Fogg Museum of Art. Over the last century it has had a variety of attributions (Fogg inv.no.1958.60; A. Sakisian La Miniature Persane du XIIe au XVIIe siècle, Paris, 1929, fig.60, attr. to late 15th century Herat; B.W. Robinson, Persian Drawings, London, 1981, pl.44, p.74 attr. Qazvin style c.1550; Stuart Cary Welch, Wonders of the Age, Harvard, 1979, pl.70, pp.184-85 attr. to Mirza Ali at Tabriz c.1540). Describing the seated princess, Cary Welch notes that only Mirza 'Ali could have conveyed the volume and weight of her body [..] in one of the most inspired passages of Safavid painting, flowers, curving fingers and sinuous arabesques converge in a perfectly harmonious triad. Another version of the same subject, although reversed, attributed to Muhammadi, is published in Abolala Soudavar, Art of the Persian Courts, New York, 1992, no.92, p.237 .

Riza 'Abbasi was the leading painter at the court of Shah 'Abbas I (1587-1629). In her study of Riza's work, Sheila Canby discusses his copies of earlier works by Bihzad (circa 1450-1535), mostly done after the 1620s where he paints "portraits of rare insights" (Sheila Canby, The Rebellious Reformer, London, 1999). Canby notes that in one occasion Riza signs: Design of Master Shaykh Muhammad [d. circa 1588]; drawing of Aqa Riza 1000 (1591-2 AD).