SAFAVID ISFAHAN, MIDDLE OR SECOND HALF 17TH CENTURY

This falconer, with his tethered bird-of-prey on his gloved right hand, is dressed in luxurious silks of the 17th-century Safavid court. His features conform to classical standards of youthful beauty, with pale skin, a rosy flush, large doe eyes, arched eyebrows and rosebud lips. The Safavid shahs themselves were keen falconers, and consequently the falconry offices were of great importance within Safavid courtly life.

An interesting comparison may be made between the falconer portrayed on the present painting and one on a wall painting at the Sukias mansion in New Julfa, the Armenian neighbourhood of Isfahan. It forms part of an ensemble of paintings within sets of recessed niches, typical of the elite palaces of Isfahan. These suites often consisted of confronting male-female pairs representing different social types. Surviving oil paintings of this type appear to have been conceived as pendants, on the basis of correspondence of in dimension, style, pictorial details and the orientation of figures.

The present painting forms part of a suite of at least four, but possibly more, paintings, two of which are now known. The other painting in this suite is one traditionally described as "A Lady in European dress", offered at Bonhams London, 23 November 2023, lot 43. It was previously been sold in these Rooms, 11 April 2000, lot 105, having originally been brought to Paris in the 1920s by a foreign envoy. Eleanor Sims, in her essay printed in the Bonhams sale catalogue, argues that the lady may be identified with the Habsburg Empress Eleonore Magdalena of Pfalz-Neuburg (1655-1720), third wife of the Emperor Leopold I (1640-1705), on the basis of her crown, which can be unmistakably identified as the Crown of Saint Stephen, the Holy Hungarian Crown. A potential positive identification of the sitter is of great significance to our understanding of architectural oil paintings in the Safavid period, as it is at odds with the notion that these are paintings of type, not specific individuals.

If the "Lady in European dress" can be identified as Empress Eleonore Magdalena, then the present portrait of a falconer may also be that of a specific person, perhaps the chief falconer at the Safavid court. However, irrespective of whether this extraordinary painting depicts a specific individual or is a figural type, it is clear that it belongs to a rare and historically significant group of oil paintings produced during the height of the Safavid period. It is these arresting paintings which form the seed from which the Qajar oil painting tradition would grow.