IRAN, 17TH CENTURY, OR POSSIBLY LATER

A very similar panel is in the L. A. Mayer Memorial Museum, Jerusalem (Rachel Hasson, 'A Tall Tale', Hali 69, June/July 1993, pp.96-7). It was described at some length, the iconography identified as coming from Qazvini's Ajaib al-Makhluqat, and catalogued as Safavid. Its appearance drew out two further examples, one in a private British Collection, the second with the dealer Erol Kazanci in Istanbul ('A Tale of Three Velvets', Hali 72, December 1993/January 1994, p.69). The example in the British collection is finer than the other two, and has an extra row of figures dividing the scenes found here. The present panel is identical in composition, colouring and scale to the L. A. Mayer and the Kazanci examples. In the short note publishing the second and third, the author suggests that the group to which ours belongs was probably a cheaper "commercial" version of the more complex example in the British collection which was probably made for the court.