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Lot Essay
When it first appeared for sale in 1993, this fine drawing was attributed to the Safavid master Aqa Mirak, the third artist to be charge of the production of the celebrated Shah Tahmasp Shahnama after Sultan Muhammad and Mir Musavvir. He came from an Isfahani family of Sayyid descent and, according to the Safavid Prince Sam Mirza, who wrote circa 1550, was in close attendance upon the Shah and served as the ‘guiding spirit’ for other artists. He is thought to have moved with the court to Qazwin in 1548 and to have worked for Prince Ibrahim at Mashhad after 1556. No signed works by him are known, though attributions have been made by Welch on the basis of his ascribed miniatures in Shah Tahmasp’s Khamsa, now in the British Library.
The original attribution to this famous artist is justified. In describing another painting attributed to Aqa Mirak in the Art and History Trust Collection, Abolala Soudavar writes of the ‘unnatural twist in the silhouette’ of one of the figures. Whilst the figure’s feet are drawn laterally, much like those of our horseman, his hips and upper body directly face the viewer (Abolala Soudavar, Art of the Persian Courts. Selections from the Art and History Trust Collection, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1992, no.69, p.182). Soudavar also describes the shape of the turbans and the details of the faces, including ‘almost imperceptible double chins’, as other features that distinguish the artist’s work. Both again are features shared by our drawing.
The horse in our drawing which leaps, seemingly oblivious to the dragon wrapped around it, is very similar to those drawn elsewhere by Aqa Mirak. In his painting ‘Faridun tests his sons’ from the Shah Tahmasp Shahnama and formerly in the collection of Stuart Cary Welch, the horses, particularly that in the lower right hand corner, share with ours the same wide-eyed cartoon-like quality (Sheila R. Canby, The Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp. The Persian Book of Kings, New York, 2011, f.42v, p.49). The furrowed brow and almost apologetic stare of our horseman is similarly paralleled in much of the artist’s known work – see for example the painting of ‘Shapur informing Khusrow that Shirin awaits’ in which the figure in a white turban bearing a large platter on the right hand edge of the painting, or the depiction of Burzuy from the same manuscript (Martin Bernard Dickson and Stuart Cary Welch, The Houghton Shahnama, Massachusetts and London, 1981, vol.1, fig.133, p.97 and fig.147, p.106).
The subject of a horseman encountering a ferocious dragon was a popular one with Persian draughtsmen. A version attributed to Sadiqi is in the Aga Khan Collection (Anthony Welch and Stuart Cary Welch, Arts of the Islamic Book,New York, 1982, no.31). Another – attributable to Siyawush – is in the Art and History Trust Collection (Soudavar, op.cit, no.102, p.255).
In the last quarter of the 16th century Sadiqi Beg, the head of the royal library-atelier of Shah Abbas, wrote on the conventions of border design in a treatise called The Canons of Painting. In it he noted, “to avoid being misled you should seek out the school of Aqa Mirak...There is a double configuration commonly called girift-o gir, which is to say, the “give and take” of animals locked in battle…You must at all costs avoid any bodily slackness in your figures…both bodies must be shown wholly at grips with one another” (Dickson and Welch, op.cit., vol.1, pp.96-117). Although locked in battle with a horseman as opposed to another animal, our drawing shows exactly the dynamism and precision that Sadeqi Beg describes.
The original attribution to this famous artist is justified. In describing another painting attributed to Aqa Mirak in the Art and History Trust Collection, Abolala Soudavar writes of the ‘unnatural twist in the silhouette’ of one of the figures. Whilst the figure’s feet are drawn laterally, much like those of our horseman, his hips and upper body directly face the viewer (Abolala Soudavar, Art of the Persian Courts. Selections from the Art and History Trust Collection, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1992, no.69, p.182). Soudavar also describes the shape of the turbans and the details of the faces, including ‘almost imperceptible double chins’, as other features that distinguish the artist’s work. Both again are features shared by our drawing.
The horse in our drawing which leaps, seemingly oblivious to the dragon wrapped around it, is very similar to those drawn elsewhere by Aqa Mirak. In his painting ‘Faridun tests his sons’ from the Shah Tahmasp Shahnama and formerly in the collection of Stuart Cary Welch, the horses, particularly that in the lower right hand corner, share with ours the same wide-eyed cartoon-like quality (Sheila R. Canby, The Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp. The Persian Book of Kings, New York, 2011, f.42v, p.49). The furrowed brow and almost apologetic stare of our horseman is similarly paralleled in much of the artist’s known work – see for example the painting of ‘Shapur informing Khusrow that Shirin awaits’ in which the figure in a white turban bearing a large platter on the right hand edge of the painting, or the depiction of Burzuy from the same manuscript (Martin Bernard Dickson and Stuart Cary Welch, The Houghton Shahnama, Massachusetts and London, 1981, vol.1, fig.133, p.97 and fig.147, p.106).
The subject of a horseman encountering a ferocious dragon was a popular one with Persian draughtsmen. A version attributed to Sadiqi is in the Aga Khan Collection (Anthony Welch and Stuart Cary Welch, Arts of the Islamic Book,New York, 1982, no.31). Another – attributable to Siyawush – is in the Art and History Trust Collection (Soudavar, op.cit, no.102, p.255).
In the last quarter of the 16th century Sadiqi Beg, the head of the royal library-atelier of Shah Abbas, wrote on the conventions of border design in a treatise called The Canons of Painting. In it he noted, “to avoid being misled you should seek out the school of Aqa Mirak...There is a double configuration commonly called girift-o gir, which is to say, the “give and take” of animals locked in battle…You must at all costs avoid any bodily slackness in your figures…both bodies must be shown wholly at grips with one another” (Dickson and Welch, op.cit., vol.1, pp.96-117). Although locked in battle with a horseman as opposed to another animal, our drawing shows exactly the dynamism and precision that Sadeqi Beg describes.