BY MU'IN MUSAVVIR, ISFAHAN, CIRCA 1680

The most celebrated student of Riza 'Abbasi, Mu'in was also the most prolific. In a long career from 1635 to 1707, he produced manuscript illustrations, ink drawings, and single-figure paintings. Details of his life are known only through his works, which he often signed and annotated; there is a lack of additional documentation about him. Though his style owes a debt to calligraphy, his figures are less stylized than those of Riza and have a greater naturalism in their facial expressions. Unlike his contemporaries, Muhammad Zaman and Shaykh 'Abbasi, he was uninfluenced by European painting trends, and can be considered the last major painter in the traditional Safavid style. (E. Sims: Peerless Images, New Haven 2002, p.73).