Interesting facts
Persian miniature painting (brief overview)
Persian miniature painting reached its peak during the Mongol and Timurid periods between the 13th and 16th centuries, making the search for the origin of this artistic style of painting quite complicated. We know that the Mongol rulers in Iran encouraged the Chinese style of painting and that they also brought with them many Chinese artists and craftsmen. Paper (a Chinese invention) had already reached the territory of Persia around 753, so the influence of Chinese art on Persian art can be seen from that time onwards.
The essence of the Persian miniature is its illustration. It gave a visual image to the text, story or poetry, which made it more attractive, more interesting and easier to understand. The Persian miniature combined poetry and illustration into a kind of wonderful, unique combination, a reflection of human dreams, as someone wrote….
In the last millennium, Persia has produced enough superb literary works to inspire the great painters of its time. At the end of the 10th century, the Persian writer Firdawsi wrote the Book of Kings (Shah Nameh) , which Iranians still venerate as their national epic, where their mythology is collected in 50,000 verses, where through real historical events and also through mythology and legends he describes the history of the country and the Persian people from the creation of the universe to the Arab conquest of Persia in the 7th century.
In the 12th century, their poet Nizami wrote the romantic work Khamsa (5 stories in verse), which was extremely popular and was, among other things, an inspiration for Indian poets, who repeated it many times. The thirteenth century was marked by the masterpieces of Sadi, the author of Bustan and Golestan. Golestan is a collection of anecdotes and proverbs, life wisdom and advice written in elegant rhymed prose, in some places verses are also added to the text. Bustan is a didactic lyrical work and represents one of the greatest masterpieces of Persian literature. The fourteenth century was a time of a new wave, new ideas, romanticism, and the most famous creators of that time were Amir Khosroe Dehlavi, Khajoo Kermani, Hafez and Kamal Khodjandi.
The rich treasury of quality Persian literature was the lever for the emergence of many important schools of miniature painting, each of which stood out with its own unique, characteristic style. The most famous schools were in the cities of Shiraz, Tabriz and Herat, and these played the most important role in the development of miniature painting both in Iran and elsewhere in Central Asia.
In the 13th and 14th centuries, the city of Shiraz in central Iran experienced a unique cultural flourishing. This was the time of Saadi, Kermani and Hafez, who gave the Persians superb poetry and the miniatures associated with it. The epic poem Shahnameh was the one most often depicted in illustrations, characterized by symmetry, static composition, directness and monotony. The school of miniatures in Shiraz had a great influence and by the end of the 15th century the highest quality miniatures of the time were being painted there. The illustrations of Khamse (Nizami, 1491) are an example of the peak of this period. Both the overall composition itself and the small details are purified, perfect, the silhouettes are clear. The strokes in the painting are precise and reliable.
In northwestern Iran, a school of art was founded in the city of Tabriz at the end of the 13th century. It was characterized by a combination of Far Eastern artistic influences and Armenian-Byzantine painting styles in its illustrations.
Translated by A. Krhin, A brief history of Persian Miniature, Katy Kianush, iranchamber.com
