PROBABLY QAZVIN, SAFAVID IRAN, LAST QUARTER 16TH CENTURY

This distinctive folio from a dispersed Shahnama manuscript is closely related to an imperial copy of the work produced for Shah Isma’il II in Qazvin in circa 1577. The large figures and the spirited depictions of the horses in our manuscript are similar to those found in an illustration now in the Keir Collection which B.W. Robinson attributes to the Shah Isma’il II Shahnama (Barbara Brend and Charles Melville, Epic of the Persian Kings: The Art of Ferdowsi’s Shahnama, Cambridge, 2010, no.73, pp.180-81; and B.W. Robinson, Ernst J. Grube, G.M. Meredith Owens, R.W. Skelton, Islamic Painting and the Arts of the Book, London, 1976, no.III.295, pl.63, p.188). The rounded faces of our figures and the delicately illuminated textiles are more closely related to an illustration of the Shahnama in the Metropolitan Museum attributed by Ernst J. Grube to Qazvin at the end of the 16th century (inv. 35.48; Ernst J. Grube, The Classical Style in Islamic Painting, Venice, 1968, no.81, p.200). An illustrated folio attributed to the Shahnama of Shah Isma’il II was sold at Sotheby’s, London, 25 April 2012, lot 475.