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Lot Essay
This elegant painting was executed at an unsettled time in the life of the painter Mirza Ali, and at a moment of change in the wider history of Safavid painting. Having worked at the court of Shah Tahmasp and contributed to his great Shahnama, by the 1570s he was working instead for Prince Ibrahim Mirza, after Shah Tahmasp lost interest in artistic pursuits. Like his artist, in the 1570s Ibrahim Mirza had fallen from royal favour, and had been sent into effective exile as governor of Sabzavar. When Ibrahim Mirza arrived in Khorasan, his vizier Khwaja Shaykh Uvayz was instructed to supply him with grain from the local harvest, and to give him an allowance of one tuman a day (Farhad and Simpson 1993, p.288).
Living on this pittance, the patronage of lavish manuscripts like the Haft Awrang in the National Museum of Asian Art, Washington D.C. (acc.no.46.12), which was copied for Ibrahim Mirza between 1556 and 1565 was no longer possible. However, a copy of Ghazali Mashhadi’s Naqsh-i Badi’ which was prepared for him in Muharram AH 982/April-May 1574 AD has a colophon stating that it was written in Sabzavar by Ibrahim Mirza’s kitabkhaneh (Farhad and Simpson 1993, p.288). This suggests that a group of artists and calligraphers followed him into exile, Mirza Ali likely among them. It is for this reason that Stuart Cary Welch attributes this particular painting to this period of exile in the life of both artist and patron, writing that its quality 'must have brought moments of pleasure, even at Sabzavar' (Welch and Welch, 1982, p.84).
Mirza Ali’s work from this period is limited to single-page compositions or muraqqa’ albums, like another painting of a young man in the National Museum of Asian Art (acc.no.1958.61). As in our painting, a slender youth in a blue gown wears a rounded turban decorated with a drooping flower. Another comparable painting to this example is a depiction of a lady who also delicately holds a small gold-bound book in her fingertips in the collection of the Museum of Fine Art, Boston (acc.no.14.593). A final example worth mentioning sold in these Rooms, 13 July 1956, lot 180, and was attributed to Mirza Ali by Anthony Welch (Welch 1973, no.5, p.64). It depicts a similarly refined figure in an identical cross-legged pose, and is now in the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha.
Living on this pittance, the patronage of lavish manuscripts like the Haft Awrang in the National Museum of Asian Art, Washington D.C. (acc.no.46.12), which was copied for Ibrahim Mirza between 1556 and 1565 was no longer possible. However, a copy of Ghazali Mashhadi’s Naqsh-i Badi’ which was prepared for him in Muharram AH 982/April-May 1574 AD has a colophon stating that it was written in Sabzavar by Ibrahim Mirza’s kitabkhaneh (Farhad and Simpson 1993, p.288). This suggests that a group of artists and calligraphers followed him into exile, Mirza Ali likely among them. It is for this reason that Stuart Cary Welch attributes this particular painting to this period of exile in the life of both artist and patron, writing that its quality 'must have brought moments of pleasure, even at Sabzavar' (Welch and Welch, 1982, p.84).
Mirza Ali’s work from this period is limited to single-page compositions or muraqqa’ albums, like another painting of a young man in the National Museum of Asian Art (acc.no.1958.61). As in our painting, a slender youth in a blue gown wears a rounded turban decorated with a drooping flower. Another comparable painting to this example is a depiction of a lady who also delicately holds a small gold-bound book in her fingertips in the collection of the Museum of Fine Art, Boston (acc.no.14.593). A final example worth mentioning sold in these Rooms, 13 July 1956, lot 180, and was attributed to Mirza Ali by Anthony Welch (Welch 1973, no.5, p.64). It depicts a similarly refined figure in an identical cross-legged pose, and is now in the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha.