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Lot Essay
The inscription is not fully legible, Certain words can be made out, including kam tu (your wine cup) but an overall reading is not possible.
The tally of figural wall decoration that remains from the mediaeval Islamic world is meagre. Tantalising fragments have survived that offer an occluded indication of the wealth that must once have existed, amongst which two regions and periods stand out for their achievements in stucco decoration. The first is the Near East in Umayyad times (as at Qasr al-Hair al-Gharbi and Khirbat al-Mafjar). Princely themes predominate, most of which derive ultimately from Sasanian Iran, which had a well-developed tradition of such figural sculpture in stucco (e.g. Ctesiphon, Kish, Khunj, Damghan, Nizamabad, Chal Tarkhan-Eshqabad, Bishapur and Bandiyan). The second flowering of sculpture in stucco took place in the Iranian world from the 10th to the 12th centuries (Konya, Tirmidh, Khulbuk, Rayy and Sava; the latter site yielded at least two figural panels). For the most part the slightly later Iranian world sculpture, created under the Seljuks, comprising battling cavaliers, animals and music-making, is small-scale, though a few standing figures of pages or courtiers are almost life-size (Stefan Heidemann, Jean-François de Lapérouse and Vicky Parry, ‘The Large Audience: Life-Size Stucco figures of Princes from the Seljuq Period’, Muqarnas, 31, (2014), pp.35-71). Many, however, are sadly fragmentary and all are decontextualised.
Among all mediaeval stucco decoration from the Islamic world a trio of monumental panels from Seljuk Iran stand out as completely exceptional. All three were published prominently by Arthur Upham Pope in the Survey (Arthur Upham Pope, A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present, London and New York, 1939, 1304-8, 1374-7, 2729-30, pls. 514-8 and 554 and figs.508-9 and 926a-b). The largest of the three, at 2.14 m by 6.71 m long, is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. For years consigned to the reserve collection, it was a highlight of the recent exhibition of Seljuk Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Sheila Canby, Deniz Bayezit, Martina Rugiardi and A. C. S. Peacock, Court and Cosmos, the Great Age of the Seljuqs, New York, 2016, no.16, pp.76-77). Its hugely impressive presence, set high on a wall, dominated the room in which it was set. The crowning cursive inscription contains a series of royal titles although the placing of the name of Tughril in the centre above the enthroned crowned figure is now thought to be part of the reconstruction. The second, formerly in the possession of Stora Frères in Paris, and between the other two in terms of size, at 152 x 344 cm., was sold in these Rooms 5 October 2010, lot 99, and is now in the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. That offered here is the third of the group.
Despite their impressive size, all three panels are themselves incomplete, for in each case either the inscription breaks off unfinished or its opening is lost. It would be futile to speculate on their original size, since the key data are missing. All three examples have been mounted with strong modern backing to ensure stability; this also however obscures the reverse and thus complicates the interpretation. In both the Doha example and the current panel, the rhythm of the principle medallions is such that the composition as seen today is almost certain to differ from the original arrangement. In Doha two figural stellar medallions flank two central palmette medallions. A study of almost all figural designs in other materials, especially metalwork, would indicate that the original arrangement was more likely to be a straight alternation of figural and palmette medallions. In the present panel it is less clear whether the sequence has been altered. It is certainly possible to envisage a sequence that would have had a succession of A, B, A, C, repeated in further segments, with A being the horsemen facing right, B being the pair of figures and C being the horseman facing left, and the interlace patterns in the background are less obviously composite than they are in the Doha example. Both the Philadelphia and the Doha panels have been examined and shown to be composite from one or more smaller elements, with areas of make-up. This is clearly detailed in the Court and Cosmos entry for the Philadelphia panel, and visible in the present arrangement of panel in Doha compared to its appearance here in 2010. The restoration of the Doha panel was also publicly discussed by the chief conservator Dr. Stefan Mazarovic in a presentation on 16 November 2016. In both cases, while a considerable amount of restoration was uncovered and removed, the basic structure of the panels and the key elements remain in place. Today’s audience is far better prepared to read missing elements in a design such as these panels than the audience at the time when they were originally restored in the earlier 20th century, and puts a far greater emphasis on knowing that what is presented is original.
The composition of the Philadelphia panel seems to derive from painted prototypes such as the generic enthronement scenes of manuscript frontispieces or the frescoes of the Ghaznavid throne hall at Lashkar-i Bazar and two similar fragmentary frescoes from Seljuk Iran. The present panel and its counterpart in Boston, however, draw not only on these sources but also on a long-established tradition of stucco dado ornament, as illustrated for instance at Afrasiyab, Tirmidh or Samanid Nishapur. In such work large interconnected medallions dominate the available space, a formula repeated in, and perhaps even copied from, textiles. This formula also recurs frequently in Seljuk metalwork; the medallions, which take quite varied forms – circular, lobed, polygonal, stellar – are filled with geometric, vegetal or figural motifs. Such a layout accords equal importance as filler ornament to each of these three themes.
This link to other materials is very apparent in all three stucco panels. We know so little about the architectural interiors for which they were created, our vision of the Seljuk built secular environment is to a considerable extent built on careful observation of details in other materials. The paired figures leaning in to each other flanking a central cypress tree at each side of the Doha panel immediately remind one of the interior of many a mina’i pottery bowl. The row of attendant figures on the Philadelphia panel is reminiscent of those moulded around the sides of a small group of Kashan monochrome pottery ewers such as two in the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, one sold in these Rooms, 7 April 2011, lot 43, the other, probably from the same mould, at Sotheby’s, 14 April 2010, lot 142. Similar rows of figures are also found in inlaid metalwork, such as those around the cavetto of the magnificent Ayyubid tray in Cleveland (inv.1945.386) and it is metalwork more than pottery that has the closest parallels to our present panel. The relative scale of the designs here, both of the medallions within the main band, and of the figures that occupy the medallions, are the same as on many a silver inlaid bronze vessel, even if the actual drawing here is very different. The link even extends to the the band of running animals along the lowest register; both the Cleveland tray and also many a product of Khorassan such as the penbox signed by Shadi and dated 1210-11 AD in the Freer Sackler National Gallery of Asian Art, Washington D.C., have comparable border designs (Esin Atil, W. T. Chase and Paul Jett, Islamic Metalwork in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., no.14, pp.102-109). There, as here, the majority of the trotting hounds and other animals are facing forwards, but the occasional one looks back over its head, concerned about what might be happening just behind.
The present panel is notable for its high relief, its mastery of floral ornament, its convoluted kufic inscription and its unique design of four adjoining lobed ovals. The carving technique repays close examination. A subtle awareness of texture makes itself felt not only in the variable depth of the figural carving but also in the type of background that is employed. For the figural scenes it is an even square grid of tiny diamond elements which throws the figures into sharp relief. For the other areas delineated by the scrolling elements there is a variety of different patterns, mostly based on a triangular or hexagonal lattices with a great consistency in how they are deployed. When first made, it is almost certain that this panel would have been a riot of colour. Quite how much would have been painted we do not know; the intricate detailing in the background lends itself to light falling sharply angled across it and may not have needed much colour. Robert Hillenbrand, when examining the Doha panel noted a tiny element of gilding in one crevice, although there was no way of knowing for certain whether it was original. it is worth remembering that a mass of heavily gilded stucco ornament found a few yards from the Philadelphia panel was rendered down for the sake of the gold, which was computed to be worth some £7, no mean sum in the early 1930s. The restoration of the Philadelphia panel has shown that the inscription had a blue background, although again there is no way of knowing for sure whether this was original or later in date. The separate large stucco figures noted earlier, scattered through museums, all retain colour, and two images by de Lapérouse in the article already noted by recreate a suggestion of how strong the original colour might have been there (Heidemann, de Lapérouse and Parry, op.cit. pls. 30 and 31, p.61).
The huge scale and complex execution of this panel and its counterparts in Philadelphia and Doha coupled with the varied courtly iconography which they all display, point unambiguously to royal rather than affluent mercantile patronage. Clearly themes and patterns migrated across media, and equally clearly it was the privileged context of the palace wall which best suited both narrative themes and the gradual unfolding of a well-nigh life-size courtly ambiente. Its components are individually familiar as iconic images which recur in book painting, metalwork and especially luxury ceramics, and are the bread and butter of every handbook which deals with medieval Persian art. But they are familiar as isolated set pieces only, reduced to fit within a circular dish, a medallion or a diminutive rectangular frame, and not as parts of a larger whole. This panel and its two counterparts allow one to savour, in something approaching their full original context, the impact of large-scale figural art in the interiors of Seljuk palaces. Thus they flesh out the detailed descriptions in literary sources, such as the Tarikh-i Bayhaqi, of how the interiors of royal buildings were decorated.
We are grateful to Professor Robert Hillenbrand for his permission to incorporate much of the material from the entry he prepared for the Doha panel when it was sold in these Rooms.
Additional comparative literature not included in the text above:
F.Sarre, “Figürliche Stuckplastik in der islamischen Kunstabteilung”, in Amtliche Berichte aus den Königlichen Kunstsammlungen XXXV (1914), 181-9
P.B.C.(=Cott), “A Persian stucco figure”, Bulletin of the Worcester Art Museum XXIII (1932), 104-10
A.U.Pope, “Some recently discovered Seldjuk stucco”, Ars Islamica I (1934), 110-17
B.P.Denike, Arkhitekturnii Ornament Srednei Azii (Moscow, 1939), 48-69 and 78-80
R.Hillenbrand, “Islamic art. Architectural decoration: Figural sculpture”, in J.S.Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art (London, 1996), 16: 245a-247b.
The tally of figural wall decoration that remains from the mediaeval Islamic world is meagre. Tantalising fragments have survived that offer an occluded indication of the wealth that must once have existed, amongst which two regions and periods stand out for their achievements in stucco decoration. The first is the Near East in Umayyad times (as at Qasr al-Hair al-Gharbi and Khirbat al-Mafjar). Princely themes predominate, most of which derive ultimately from Sasanian Iran, which had a well-developed tradition of such figural sculpture in stucco (e.g. Ctesiphon, Kish, Khunj, Damghan, Nizamabad, Chal Tarkhan-Eshqabad, Bishapur and Bandiyan). The second flowering of sculpture in stucco took place in the Iranian world from the 10th to the 12th centuries (Konya, Tirmidh, Khulbuk, Rayy and Sava; the latter site yielded at least two figural panels). For the most part the slightly later Iranian world sculpture, created under the Seljuks, comprising battling cavaliers, animals and music-making, is small-scale, though a few standing figures of pages or courtiers are almost life-size (Stefan Heidemann, Jean-François de Lapérouse and Vicky Parry, ‘The Large Audience: Life-Size Stucco figures of Princes from the Seljuq Period’, Muqarnas, 31, (2014), pp.35-71). Many, however, are sadly fragmentary and all are decontextualised.
Among all mediaeval stucco decoration from the Islamic world a trio of monumental panels from Seljuk Iran stand out as completely exceptional. All three were published prominently by Arthur Upham Pope in the Survey (Arthur Upham Pope, A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present, London and New York, 1939, 1304-8, 1374-7, 2729-30, pls. 514-8 and 554 and figs.508-9 and 926a-b). The largest of the three, at 2.14 m by 6.71 m long, is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. For years consigned to the reserve collection, it was a highlight of the recent exhibition of Seljuk Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Sheila Canby, Deniz Bayezit, Martina Rugiardi and A. C. S. Peacock, Court and Cosmos, the Great Age of the Seljuqs, New York, 2016, no.16, pp.76-77). Its hugely impressive presence, set high on a wall, dominated the room in which it was set. The crowning cursive inscription contains a series of royal titles although the placing of the name of Tughril in the centre above the enthroned crowned figure is now thought to be part of the reconstruction. The second, formerly in the possession of Stora Frères in Paris, and between the other two in terms of size, at 152 x 344 cm., was sold in these Rooms 5 October 2010, lot 99, and is now in the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. That offered here is the third of the group.
Despite their impressive size, all three panels are themselves incomplete, for in each case either the inscription breaks off unfinished or its opening is lost. It would be futile to speculate on their original size, since the key data are missing. All three examples have been mounted with strong modern backing to ensure stability; this also however obscures the reverse and thus complicates the interpretation. In both the Doha example and the current panel, the rhythm of the principle medallions is such that the composition as seen today is almost certain to differ from the original arrangement. In Doha two figural stellar medallions flank two central palmette medallions. A study of almost all figural designs in other materials, especially metalwork, would indicate that the original arrangement was more likely to be a straight alternation of figural and palmette medallions. In the present panel it is less clear whether the sequence has been altered. It is certainly possible to envisage a sequence that would have had a succession of A, B, A, C, repeated in further segments, with A being the horsemen facing right, B being the pair of figures and C being the horseman facing left, and the interlace patterns in the background are less obviously composite than they are in the Doha example. Both the Philadelphia and the Doha panels have been examined and shown to be composite from one or more smaller elements, with areas of make-up. This is clearly detailed in the Court and Cosmos entry for the Philadelphia panel, and visible in the present arrangement of panel in Doha compared to its appearance here in 2010. The restoration of the Doha panel was also publicly discussed by the chief conservator Dr. Stefan Mazarovic in a presentation on 16 November 2016. In both cases, while a considerable amount of restoration was uncovered and removed, the basic structure of the panels and the key elements remain in place. Today’s audience is far better prepared to read missing elements in a design such as these panels than the audience at the time when they were originally restored in the earlier 20th century, and puts a far greater emphasis on knowing that what is presented is original.
The composition of the Philadelphia panel seems to derive from painted prototypes such as the generic enthronement scenes of manuscript frontispieces or the frescoes of the Ghaznavid throne hall at Lashkar-i Bazar and two similar fragmentary frescoes from Seljuk Iran. The present panel and its counterpart in Boston, however, draw not only on these sources but also on a long-established tradition of stucco dado ornament, as illustrated for instance at Afrasiyab, Tirmidh or Samanid Nishapur. In such work large interconnected medallions dominate the available space, a formula repeated in, and perhaps even copied from, textiles. This formula also recurs frequently in Seljuk metalwork; the medallions, which take quite varied forms – circular, lobed, polygonal, stellar – are filled with geometric, vegetal or figural motifs. Such a layout accords equal importance as filler ornament to each of these three themes.
This link to other materials is very apparent in all three stucco panels. We know so little about the architectural interiors for which they were created, our vision of the Seljuk built secular environment is to a considerable extent built on careful observation of details in other materials. The paired figures leaning in to each other flanking a central cypress tree at each side of the Doha panel immediately remind one of the interior of many a mina’i pottery bowl. The row of attendant figures on the Philadelphia panel is reminiscent of those moulded around the sides of a small group of Kashan monochrome pottery ewers such as two in the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, one sold in these Rooms, 7 April 2011, lot 43, the other, probably from the same mould, at Sotheby’s, 14 April 2010, lot 142. Similar rows of figures are also found in inlaid metalwork, such as those around the cavetto of the magnificent Ayyubid tray in Cleveland (inv.1945.386) and it is metalwork more than pottery that has the closest parallels to our present panel. The relative scale of the designs here, both of the medallions within the main band, and of the figures that occupy the medallions, are the same as on many a silver inlaid bronze vessel, even if the actual drawing here is very different. The link even extends to the the band of running animals along the lowest register; both the Cleveland tray and also many a product of Khorassan such as the penbox signed by Shadi and dated 1210-11 AD in the Freer Sackler National Gallery of Asian Art, Washington D.C., have comparable border designs (Esin Atil, W. T. Chase and Paul Jett, Islamic Metalwork in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., no.14, pp.102-109). There, as here, the majority of the trotting hounds and other animals are facing forwards, but the occasional one looks back over its head, concerned about what might be happening just behind.
The present panel is notable for its high relief, its mastery of floral ornament, its convoluted kufic inscription and its unique design of four adjoining lobed ovals. The carving technique repays close examination. A subtle awareness of texture makes itself felt not only in the variable depth of the figural carving but also in the type of background that is employed. For the figural scenes it is an even square grid of tiny diamond elements which throws the figures into sharp relief. For the other areas delineated by the scrolling elements there is a variety of different patterns, mostly based on a triangular or hexagonal lattices with a great consistency in how they are deployed. When first made, it is almost certain that this panel would have been a riot of colour. Quite how much would have been painted we do not know; the intricate detailing in the background lends itself to light falling sharply angled across it and may not have needed much colour. Robert Hillenbrand, when examining the Doha panel noted a tiny element of gilding in one crevice, although there was no way of knowing for certain whether it was original. it is worth remembering that a mass of heavily gilded stucco ornament found a few yards from the Philadelphia panel was rendered down for the sake of the gold, which was computed to be worth some £7, no mean sum in the early 1930s. The restoration of the Philadelphia panel has shown that the inscription had a blue background, although again there is no way of knowing for sure whether this was original or later in date. The separate large stucco figures noted earlier, scattered through museums, all retain colour, and two images by de Lapérouse in the article already noted by recreate a suggestion of how strong the original colour might have been there (Heidemann, de Lapérouse and Parry, op.cit. pls. 30 and 31, p.61).
The huge scale and complex execution of this panel and its counterparts in Philadelphia and Doha coupled with the varied courtly iconography which they all display, point unambiguously to royal rather than affluent mercantile patronage. Clearly themes and patterns migrated across media, and equally clearly it was the privileged context of the palace wall which best suited both narrative themes and the gradual unfolding of a well-nigh life-size courtly ambiente. Its components are individually familiar as iconic images which recur in book painting, metalwork and especially luxury ceramics, and are the bread and butter of every handbook which deals with medieval Persian art. But they are familiar as isolated set pieces only, reduced to fit within a circular dish, a medallion or a diminutive rectangular frame, and not as parts of a larger whole. This panel and its two counterparts allow one to savour, in something approaching their full original context, the impact of large-scale figural art in the interiors of Seljuk palaces. Thus they flesh out the detailed descriptions in literary sources, such as the Tarikh-i Bayhaqi, of how the interiors of royal buildings were decorated.
We are grateful to Professor Robert Hillenbrand for his permission to incorporate much of the material from the entry he prepared for the Doha panel when it was sold in these Rooms.
Additional comparative literature not included in the text above:
F.Sarre, “Figürliche Stuckplastik in der islamischen Kunstabteilung”, in Amtliche Berichte aus den Königlichen Kunstsammlungen XXXV (1914), 181-9
P.B.C.(=Cott), “A Persian stucco figure”, Bulletin of the Worcester Art Museum XXIII (1932), 104-10
A.U.Pope, “Some recently discovered Seldjuk stucco”, Ars Islamica I (1934), 110-17
B.P.Denike, Arkhitekturnii Ornament Srednei Azii (Moscow, 1939), 48-69 and 78-80
R.Hillenbrand, “Islamic art. Architectural decoration: Figural sculpture”, in J.S.Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art (London, 1996), 16: 245a-247b.