Page 63 - ART OF THE ISLAMIC AND INDIAN WORLDS Carpets, Ceramics Objects, Christie's London Oct..27, 2022

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A SAFAVID SILK TOMB COVER QURAN JUZ' XI
FRAGMENT SAFAVID IRAN, 17TH CENTURY
IRAN, CIRCA 1700 Comprising the eleventh juz', Arabic manuscript
With a central register of blue ground decorated on buff paper, 25ff. plus two flyleaves, each folio
with ivory cartouches containing thuluth with 7ll. of black naskh within gold and polychrome
inscriptions, stylised half carnations around, rules, with gold rosette verse markers, gold and
framed by vertical yellow ground calligraphic blue marginal medallions, sura headings in gold
cartouches separated by split palmettes, an area thuluth inside illuminated cartouches, opening
of plain red ground to one side, couched to a fabric folio with gold and polychrome illuminated
mount and glazed headpiece, purple dyed paper flyleaves, in original
Fragment 20q x 20ºin. (52 x 51.5cm.); Safavid binding with flap with large panel of
mount 23æ x 23æin. (60.5 x 60.5cm.) stamped and tooled gilded decoration worked
with calligraphic borders, doublures with gilded
£7,000-10,000 US$8,100-11,000 decoupé arabesque medallion and spandrels over
€8,100-11,000 polychrome panels.
Text panel 4¡ x 5q in. (10.9 x 14.1 cm.);
PROVENANCE: folio 6w x 9¬ in. (17.3 x 24.2 cm.)
Antike Textilien und Sammlerteppiche, Rudolf
Mangisch, Galerie und Auktionshaus, Zurich, £7,000-10,000 US$8,100-11,000
16 November 1991, nr. 80 €8,000-11,000
Another juz' from the same Qur’an was sold in
INSCRIPTIONS:
In the small, yellow cartouches: ya husayn-i these Rooms, 7 April 2011, lot 134.
mazlum, 'O Husayn, the oppressed!'
In the large cartouche an undeciphered inscription
containing the names of Husayn and 'Ali.
Textiles of this kind were made as tomb covers or
hangings as tributes for the shrines of honoured
or holy men. A similar textile is in the Philadelphia 49
Museum of Art (inv.no.1922-22-90; published
in Sheila R. Canby, Shah ‘Abbas. The Remaking A YOUTH HOLDING A BOTTLE
SAFAVID IRAN, CIRCA 1640
of Iran, exhibition catalogue, London, 2009,
pp.238-39, no.116). It shares with ours identical Opaque pigments and ink heightened with gold
on paper, set between gold and polychrome rules,
format and decoration but with an inverted colour
47 scheme. The calligraphy there was also bordered with a gold sprinkled border and stencilled blue
margins decorated with arabesques, pasted onto
by elegant split-palmette leaves and rows of card, the reverse with '181' in pencil
quatrefoils surrounded by single leaves. Jon Painting 4q x 1win. (11.5 x 4.8cm.);
Thompson suggested that the stylised carnations folio 10 x 6¿in. (25.3 x 15.5cm.)
that appear in white on the blue ground of our
£8,000-12,000 US$9,200-14,000
textile are a typical Ottoman motif. However
€9,200-14,000
they appear in an album of floral drawings with
illustrations by Safavid artists which are thought This elegant drawing is in the style of Muhammad
have been the designs for textiles as well as in Yusuf al-Husayni (d.1666) who was one of the
other Safavid textiles themselves (Canby, op.cit., foremost artists of seventeenth-century Persia.
p.234, no.113). Thompson proposed that a silk The early part of his career was spent in Herat
textile in Doha that also bore inscriptions and under the patronage of Hassan Shamlu, but
carnations was made for export to the Ottoman after his death he moved to Isfahan. Following
world. The overtly Shi’ite invocations here in the style of Reza-i Abbasi (d.1635), alongside
however, and on the Philadelphia textile indicate contemporaries such as Muhammad Qasim,
that it was more likely made for a Shi’ite tomb or Muhammad Yusuf developed his own unique
shrine. style and produced drawings and paintings of
outstanding draughtsmanship. Typical of his
style is the depiction of graceful, tall figures with
well-proportioned faces, and the use of lapiz
lazuli to highlight certain folds on fabrics, as seen
here. Although our painting is not signed, it is
possible to assume it is either by Muhammad
Yusuf or a contemporaneous artist who followed
in his style. A drawing of a dervish signed and
dated by Muhammad Yusuf which shares similar
features to our painting is in the Museum of Fine
Arts Boston, (inv. no.14.642). A portrait of a lady
holding a wine bottle also signed and dated by
48
Muhammad Yusuf was sold at Sotheby’s London,
25 April 2012, lot 478.
49
60 In addition to the hammer price, a Buyer’s Premium (plus VAT) is payable. Other taxes and/or an Artist Resale Royalty
fee are also payable if the lot has a tax or λ symbol. Check Section D of the Conditions of Sale at the back of this catalogue.