Page 58 - ART OF THE ISLAMIC AND INDIAN WORLDS Carpets, Ceramics Objects, Christie's London Oct..27, 2022

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A RECLINING BEAUTY
SAFAVID IRAN, FIRST HALF 17TH CENTURY
Opaque pigments heightened with gold on blue paper, the woman lies, semi-
nude, with her arms folded over her head, gold landscape details picked out
around, laid down between colourful rules on gold-speckled margins
Painting 3æ x 7ºin. (9.5 x 18.5cm.); folio 5º x 8¬in. (13.5 x 22cm.)
£20,000-30,000 US$23,000-34,000
€23,000-34,000
Reza ‘Abbasi (the artist who painted the Bulbul in the current sale, lot 53),
was the master who introduced the first real ‘nude’ in Persian painting.
Until that point nude, or partially clothed, figures had appeared only as part
of manuscript illustration. Amongst others, one of the frequently depicted
scenes containing a partial nude is from Nizami’s epic Khosraw wa Shirin
– the moment when Khosraw inadvertently catches sight of Shirin bathing
in a pond, her hair usually protecting her modesty (Axel Langer (ed.), The
Fascination of Persia. The Persian European Dialogue in Seventeenth-Century
Art & Contemporary Art of Teheran, exhibition catalogue, Zurich, 2013, p.180).
Reza’s nudes, which are both attributed to circa 1590-95, include a drawing,
A Maiden Reclines, in the Harvard Art Museum (where it was a gift of Edith
I. Welch in memory of Stuart Cary Welch; 2011.536) and a Reclining Nude (in
the Freer Gallery of Art (F.1954.24). They are not isolated works – a number
of his pupils such as Muhammad Qasim (d.1659) and Mir Afzal al-Husayni
(active 1642-66) also painted the same composition.
European models are a likely source of inspiration for the nudes painted by
Reza and his pupils. In the period of Shah ‘Abbas I, Italian works of art were
readily available in the ‘boutique [du] Venetien Aléxandre Scudenoli’ at the
bazaar in Isfahan (Pietro della Valle, Histoire apologetique d’Abbas, roi de
Perse, Paris, 1631, p.32, quoted in Langer, op.cit., p.181). It is also thought
that the Dutch East India Company brought large numbers of engravings
to Persia. The artist responsible for our painting seems to have modelled
the painting on Reza’s A Maiden Reclines. The pose is the same, with the
arms crossed over the head, the veil entangled in her hair, and a cocoon of
a blanket wrapped around her. Reza in turn seems to have been inspired by
an engraving, ostensibly of a dying Cleopatra on a daybed, by Marcantonio
Roimondi (1465-1534) reproduced here. Another version of the subject,
by Mir Afzal al-Husayni, attributed to 1640, is in the British Museum
(1974,0617,0.15.24; published in Langer, op.cit., p.190).

The navy ground, presumably used to indicate the moody night sky, is rare in
Safavid painting. A Safavid painting of lovers, attributed to circa 1630-40, in
the Minneapolis Institute of Art uses the same feature (acc.no.51.37.38) as
does a portrait of a seated young man, circa 1600-25, in the Chester Beatty
Library (Per 246.4). A painting of two lovers in the Smithsonian attributed
th
to the early 17 century also shares the same feature (acc.S1986.294). In all
three examples the blue background is highlighted with floral and landscape
elements picked out in gold.

Marcantonio Roimondi (1465-1534): Cleopatra.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Inv.17.50.16.30
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