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Lot Essay
This is an exquisite drawing of a dragon entwined in a tree and preying on flying ducks. Dragons are powerful images drawn from Iran’s literary tradition – the hero Rustam slays dragons in Firdawsi’s 10th century epic Shahnama. An early 15th century folio from a Shiraz manuscript of Qazwini’s ‘Aja’ib al-Makhluqat displays a marine dragon treated as a pseudo-scientific specimen (Marthe Bernus Taylor (dir.), L’étrange et le Merveilleux en terres d’Islam, Paris, 2001, cat.26, pp.43-44). In our drawing however the dragon is treated as an independent subject. It fits in the Timurid tradition of ink brush drawings (qalam-i siyahi), itself influenced by the Far East and Eastern Central Asia, that were later mounted on large album pages. Mostly produced by the Timurid Kitabkhana, the artistic institution responsible for creating the Timurid ‘dynastic image’ and its ‘codification (Thomas W. Lentz and Glenn D. Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision, Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century, Los Angeles, 1989, p.160 and p.165). Where this drawing was executed with Timurid Iran remains a mystery as the dispersal of artists in 1411 by Ulugh Beg left several princely courts such as Tabriz, Herat or Samarqand in competition with one another
The present drawing is particularly close to a large drawing of a scene from the Er-Töshtürk Legend in the Topkapı Sarayı Museum (H.2153, David J. Roxburgh (ed.), Turks, A Journey of a Thousand Years, 600-1600, London, 2005, cat.143, p.187). The Er-Töshtürk legend is a Turkish epic where a dragon figure guards the Tree of Life. Although much larger, both works have striking similarities – the dragon’s face, the shading of the trees, the vegetation. There is little doubt that the artist of our drawing had access to that original, a stencil of it or was familiar with the artist who painted it. The Istanbul drawing is attributed Iran or Central Asia and dated to the late 14th/early 15th century. A page from another Istanbul album (H.2152, f.86a) has numerous drawings dated to the first half of the 15th century – in the centre a drawing two trees is very close to the foliage on the present work. The thick black line forming the dragon’s backbone is also similar to the drawing of a qilin on the same page.
This subject remains popular through to the Safavid and Qajar period and crossed the borders of Iran, also reproduced in Ottoman Turkey and India. The drawings of the Persian artist Shah Quli (d.1555/56) who originally based in Tabriz worked in Istanbul for Selim I and Sulayman the Magnificent illustrate the popularity of the genre beyond the Persian world.
The present drawing is particularly close to a large drawing of a scene from the Er-Töshtürk Legend in the Topkapı Sarayı Museum (H.2153, David J. Roxburgh (ed.), Turks, A Journey of a Thousand Years, 600-1600, London, 2005, cat.143, p.187). The Er-Töshtürk legend is a Turkish epic where a dragon figure guards the Tree of Life. Although much larger, both works have striking similarities – the dragon’s face, the shading of the trees, the vegetation. There is little doubt that the artist of our drawing had access to that original, a stencil of it or was familiar with the artist who painted it. The Istanbul drawing is attributed Iran or Central Asia and dated to the late 14th/early 15th century. A page from another Istanbul album (H.2152, f.86a) has numerous drawings dated to the first half of the 15th century – in the centre a drawing two trees is very close to the foliage on the present work. The thick black line forming the dragon’s backbone is also similar to the drawing of a qilin on the same page.
This subject remains popular through to the Safavid and Qajar period and crossed the borders of Iran, also reproduced in Ottoman Turkey and India. The drawings of the Persian artist Shah Quli (d.1555/56) who originally based in Tabriz worked in Istanbul for Selim I and Sulayman the Magnificent illustrate the popularity of the genre beyond the Persian world.