What is Persian Miniature Painting?
Persian miniature painting is the tradition of small-format book painting and album art that developed in the Iranian world from the Ilkhanid period of the thirteenth century to the Qajar period of the nineteenth century. It is a distinctive and influential Islamic artistic tradition, and its works, characterised by their jewel-like colour, intricate geometric pattern, high horizon, and elegant line, are among the masterpieces of medieval and early modern art. The best English introduction is Oleg Grabar’s Mostly Miniatures: An Introduction to Persian Painting (2000); the survey by Sheila Canby, Persian Painting (2000), is the best short treatment. The catalogue of the great Houghton Shahnameh at the Metropolitan Museum (Martin Bernard and Nurhan Atasoy, 2003) and the recent volume by Marianna Shreve Simpson, The Making of the Medieval Iranian Book (2019), are the principal sources for the technical side.
The Ilkhanid School (c. 1230–1330)
The Ilkhanid dynasty, the Mongol khans who ruled Iran, Iraq, and parts of Central Asia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, was the first great school of Persian miniature painting. The Ilkhanid court, centred on Tabriz, was a meeting point of Chinese, Central Asian, and Iranian artistic traditions, and the great illustrated manuscripts of the period, in particular the Jamiʿ al-tawarikh of Rashid al-Din (c. 1307–14) and the Shahnameh of the Demotte and Great Mongol manuscripts, show a strong Chinese influence in the depiction of clouds, dragons, landscape elements, and figure types. The early Ilkhanid painter Ahmad Musa, active at the court of the Ilkhanid khan Oljaytu, is generally credited as the founder of the Persian miniature tradition. The Demotte Shahnameh of his workshop, with its bold compositions, brilliant colour, and energetic brushwork, is the earliest major surviving example of Persian book painting.
The Jalayirid School (c. 1330–1430)
The Jalayirid dynasty, which ruled in Iraq and Azerbaijan in the fourteenth century, was the second great school of Persian miniature painting. The Jalayirid court at Baghdad and Tabriz patronised some of the most important early Persian painters, including Junayd, Abd al-Hayy, and their circle. The Jalayirid Shahnameh manuscripts, the Khamsa of Nizami, and the Divan of Khwaju Kirmani show a refinement and elegance that mark a clear advance over the Ilkhanid style. The Jalayirid tradition passed directly into the Timurid school through the painters who followed the Timurid conquest of the region in the late fourteenth century.
The Timurid School (c. 1330–1506)
The Timurid dynasty, founded by Timur (Tamerlane) in the late fourteenth century and centred on Herat in the fifteenth century, is often considered the high point of the Persian miniature tradition. The Timurid court at Herat, under the patronage of princes such as Baysunghur and his circle, produced some of the most refined and influential illustrated manuscripts in the history of Islamic art. The Shahnameh of Shah Rukh (c. 1430), the Khamsa of Nizami executed for Baysunghur, and the manuscripts produced for Baysunghur’s son Ala al-Dawla are the masterpieces of the Timurid tradition.
The principal painter of the Timurid school is Kamal al-Din Bihzad, the most famous of all Persian painters, active in Herat in the late fifteenth century. Bihzad’s Bustan of Saadi (1488) and his paintings for a Khamsa of Nizami are the high points of the Timurid style, with their refined drawing, delicate colour, and complex narrative composition. The Timurid tradition passed directly into the Safavid school, both through the painters who migrated to the new Safavid capital at Tabriz in the early sixteenth century and through the influence of the Baysunghurid style on the new rulers.
The Safavid School (c. 1501–1736)
The Safavid school, the longest and most prolific of the Persian miniature traditions, dominated Persian book painting from the early sixteenth century to the eighteenth. The Safavid court, first at Tabriz and then at Qazvin and Isfahan, was a major centre of the arts, and the illustrated manuscripts of the period, including the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp (the Houghton Shahnameh, c. 1525–35), the Shahnameh of Shah ʿAbbas, and the Khamsa of Nizami, are among the most famous Persian manuscripts.
The early Safavid tradition was marked by the persistence of the Timurid style, as painters trained in the Herat school migrated to the new court. The great painter Sultan Muhammad, active in the early sixteenth century, was one of the principal figures of this transition, and his work on the Houghton Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp is among the masterpieces of the period. The mid-Safavid tradition, in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, saw a gradual movement away from the formal, decorative style of the Timurid school toward a more naturalistic and intimate idiom. The great painter Riza-yi ʿAbbasi, active at the courts of Shah ʿAbbas I and his successors, is the principal figure of this transition. Riza-yi ʿAbbasi’s single-page drawings, often album paintings of youths, dervishes, and animals, are characterised by their fluid line, naturalistic figure, and understated composition.
The late Safavid school, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, saw a further decline in the quality of the book arts but a continuing tradition of single-page drawing and album painting. The painters of the period, including Muhammad Zaman, ʿAli Quli Jabbadar, and the artists of the Qazvin and Isfahan workshops, produced works of high quality, but the court patronage that had sustained the tradition in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was in decline. The tradition of Persian miniature painting continued in the Qajar period, with its own distinctive idiom, but the great age of the Persian book was over.
Materials and techniques
Persian miniature painting was, in production, a workshop art. A manuscript was produced by a team of specialists: the dirafshan (illuminator) who prepared the paper, the khattat (calligrapher) who wrote the text, the musavvir (painter) who executed the illustrations, the mudhahhib (illuminator) who added the gold and the marginal decoration, and the mujallid (bookbinder) who bound the volume. The paper was typically a high-quality handmade paper, sized with starch and burnished with an agate or pebble to give a smooth surface. The pigments were mineral and organic: lapis lazuli for blue, malachite for green, cinnabar for red, gold leaf for gold, and the various lakes and dyes for the more subtle colours. The brushes were of squirrel, cat, or sable hair, of various sizes, and the painting was done in small, careful strokes, with the colour built up in layers and the details added with the finest brushes.
The composition of a Persian miniature is characteristically flat, with no foreshortening, no cast shadows, and a high horizon that allows multiple events to be shown in a single image. The figures are arranged in a formal, often frontal manner, and the landscape elements, rocks, trees, and clouds, are stylised and decorative. The use of gold, both in the figures and in the background, is a distinctive feature of the Persian tradition, and the integration of the painting with the calligraphy, the border, and the binding is a hallmark of the high Persian book.
Major illustrated texts
The principal texts illustrated by Persian painters were the great works of Persian literature: the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, the Khamsa of Nizami, the Masnavi of Rumi, the Bustan and Gulistan of Saadi, the Divan of Hafez, and the histories of the Mongol and Timurid dynasties. The Shahnameh, the great epic of Persian kingship and heroism, was the most frequently illustrated of all Persian texts, and the illustrated copies of the Shahnameh are among the great treasures of Persian art. The Khamsa of Nizami, with its five poems in alternating prose and verse, was the second most illustrated, and the Bustan and Gulistan of Saadi and the Masnavi of Rumi were also frequently illustrated.
The illustrations of these texts followed the conventions of the Persian miniature tradition. The Shahnameh illustrations, in particular, show the great events of the epic: the reign of Jamshid, the battles of Rustam, the tragic fate of Sohrab, the accession of Ardashir, the battles of the Islamic conquest. The Khamsa illustrations show the great romantic tales: the love of Khosrow and Shirin, the romance of Layla and Majnun, the trials of the Seven Beauties, the stories of Alexander the Great, the prophecy of Bahram Gur.