QAZVIN, CIRCA 1550

Details

STUDY OF A LADY WITH CALLIGRAPHY
QAZVIN, CIRCA 1550
Gouache heightened with gold on paper, a seated lady in an orange robe and gold-embroidered blue cloak, wearing a white headress held by a jewelled band, sits slightly angled holding an album leaf in both hands, within an arched surround and with two panels containing lines of flowing nasta'liq Persian verse mounted above and to the left of the miniature, laid down within heavily illuminated royal blue border mounted on an album leaf with gold floral stencilled decoration, verso with central panel of three horizontal lines of black nasta'liq on blue ground with gold flowers, bordered with calligraphic panels and laid down with similar boldly illuminated cobalt-blue borders, with red and gold margins and blue rule, on aubergine paper with gold heightened stencilled arabesques, unframed
Miniature 5 x 2¾in. (12.7 x 7cm.); Folio 13 3/8 x 9½in. (33.9 x 24.2cm.)

Provenance

Hagop Kevorkian Fund, sold Sotheby's London, 21 April 1980, lot 58 (to present vendor)

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis. Please note that the lots of Iranian origin are subject to U.S. trade restrictions which currently prohibit the import into the United States. Similar restrictions may apply in other countries.

Lot Essay

Two other leaves from the same album were sold in Sotheby's London, 1 December 1969, lot 68 (also published in E.J. Grube, Islamic Painting in the collection of H.P.Kraus, New York, 1972, no.228, pl.L) and 7 April 1975, lot 30. All of the folios feature portraits of single figures, with panels of calligraphy within cloud bands. The, albeit imaginary, portrait of Sultan Husayn Bayqara in the work is interesting in that it immediately associates the album with him.

The album page, particularly the gold-heightened stencilled arabesques of the verso margins, also bear remarkable similarity to an album page in the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul (published in David J. Roxburgh, The Persian Album 1400-1600, Yale, 2005, fig.124, p.230).

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