DECCAN, INDIA, SECOND HALF 17TH CENTURY

This folio forms half of a double-page illuminated opening of a Shahnama. The distinctive decoration includes a number of angelic faces embedded into palmettes. This is a feature sometimes seen on Shirazi book illumination, such as a 17th century Kulliyat in the British Library (J. P. Losty, Indian And Persian Painting, New York, 2018, p.6). A plausible connection with the Deccan, however, is suggested by a fantastical study of a vase which was formerly in the collection of Howard Hodgkin, which has a similar face on the neck and a very similar style of drawing throughout (Andrew Topsfield, Visions of Mughal India: the collection of Howard Hodgkin, Oxford, 2012, pp.108-9, no.43). In the 17th century there was extensive traffic of art and artists between Iran and the Deccan, accounting for the transference of forms like this between the two regions. Similarly finely-illuminated Deccani margins can be found on a portrait of 'Ali Adil Shah II in the Barber Institute, Birmingham (B.12; published Mark Zebrowksi, Deccani Painting, London, 1983, p.141, fig.108). Another manuscript of Zakhira-yi Khrawazmshahi, copied in Golconda on 22 Shaban AH 980 / 28 December 1572 AD, with similarly rich illumination including faces, is in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (In.30; published Navina Najat Haidar and Marika Sardar, Sultans of Deccan India 1500-1700: Opulence and Fantasy, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2015, p.202, no.96).