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Page from an album made for Prince Bahram Mirza
View: Verso
Prince and Lady under Flowering Branch
Page from an album made for Prince Bahram Mirza
Persian
Timurid
Recto early 16th century; verso about 1420–40; mounted in album about 1544–45
Object Place: probably Herat, Iran or Central Asia
Medium/Technique
Recto: ink, color, and gold on paper
Verso: ink, color, and gold on silk, with paper borders
Verso: ink, color, and gold on silk, with paper borders
Dimensions
Height x width: 44.3 × 30 cm (17 7/16 × 11 13/16 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase with funds from the Francis Bartlett Donation of 1912 and by contribution
Accession Number14.545
NOT ON VIEW
CollectionsAsia, Islamic Art
ClassificationsBooks and manuscripts
A painting on silk is mounted on one side of this page from an album of calligraphy, paintings, and drawings made for a Timurid prince. Faintly visible in the upper right of the page is an inscription on the back of the silk, which reads, “work of the Chinese masters.” Though it was surely made in Iran, the painting’s silk support and the flowering branch at the top of the composition do indeed borrow from Chinese art. The group seated below the flowering branch is, however, painted in a style familiar from Timurid paintings of the early fifteenth century. The artist combined two different kinds of imagery in charming defiance of the difference in their scale. When seen in the album alongside Chinese originals as well as other drawings and paintings inspired by East Asian art, this must have stood out as a daring visual experiment.
DescriptionAlbum page from 1544–55 album made for Prince Bahram Mirza (1517–1549). On the recto are verses of Persian poetry by calligrapher Sultan Muhammad Nur (d. 1533-4) and three contemporary illuminators. On the verso is mounted a fifteenth-century painting on silk, depicting a prince and his consort seated on a rug, flanked by male servant and female musician. Above the human group, in much larger scale, a blue bird on a flowering branch, painted in Chinese style, peers downwards.
InscriptionsInscribed in Persian on back of reverse: "work of the Masters of Cathay [China]"
Calligraphic and illuminated specimens on obverse by Sultan Muhammad Nur, Hashim Mudhahhib, Mahmud al-Mudhahhib and Mawlana Yari al-Mudhahhib.
Calligraphic and illuminated specimens on obverse by Sultan Muhammad Nur, Hashim Mudhahhib, Mahmud al-Mudhahhib and Mawlana Yari al-Mudhahhib.
ProvenanceBy 1912, Victor Goloubew (b. 1879 - d. 1945), Paris [see note 1]; 1914, sold by Goloubew through M. Meyer-Riefstahl to the MFA for $76,999.81 (total price for 14.532-700). (Accession Date: June 4, 1914)
NOTES:
[1] Victor Goloubew was born in Russia but lived in Paris by the time of this acquisition. He formed this collection of Persian and Indian miniature paintings and exhibited it at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris from 1912 to 1914 (Paull, Florence Virginia. "The Goloubew Collection of Persian and Indian Paintings." Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin. Vol. XIII. No. 74. (February 1915) 1-16).
NOTES:
[1] Victor Goloubew was born in Russia but lived in Paris by the time of this acquisition. He formed this collection of Persian and Indian miniature paintings and exhibited it at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris from 1912 to 1914 (Paull, Florence Virginia. "The Goloubew Collection of Persian and Indian Paintings." Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin. Vol. XIII. No. 74. (February 1915) 1-16).