TWO ILLUMINATED BORDERS
VARIOUS PROPERTIES
TWO ILLUMINATED BORDERS

SAFAVID IRAN, CIRCA 1575

Details
TWO ILLUMINATED BORDERS
SAFAVID IRAN, CIRCA 1575
Each on black card, each with cusped medallions with finely painted figures represented half length or in full and seated, one reading, another depicted frontally, each on light blue ground, one medallion with gold floral arabesques, two half medallions on green ground along the inner edge, one border with calligraphic cartouches in white nasta'liq between, the very elegantly illuminated background with silhouette floral scrolls on dense gold speckled ground, some scrolls emitting animal heads, the second border with gold nasta'liq cartouches on similarly illuminated green speckled ground, each framing a folio from a fine 16th century illuminated manuscript with 12ll. of black nasta'liq, minor flaking
Each 10 3/8 x 6½in. (26.2 x 16.2cm.) each border

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Romain Pingannaud
Romain Pingannaud

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Lot Essay

Eight folios from two manuscripts of Jami in the Chester Beatty Library have very similar borders. The more finely illustrated are five leaves from a copy of Jami's Salaman wa Absal. The scrolls are decorated with various waq-waq motifs including numerous human faces. Three other leaves from Jami's Subhat al-Abrar are similarly illuminated but the scrolls are simply decorated with leaves and palmettes. The figures painted within the marginal medallions show musicians, half-length figures and other seated figures depicted frontally in a very similar way to those visible in the present pages. They are painted in the simplified form of the metropolitan Qazvin style practiced circa 1565-85 (M. Minovi, B.W. Robinson et.al, The Chester Beatty Library, A Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts and Miniatures, Dublin, 1960, cat. 209 and 210).

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