Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 22. (Budapest, 2003)

Iván SZÁNTÓ: Reflections on the Origins of the Persian Appliqué from the Esterházy Treasury

Qazvin and Herat, from the 1550s onwards. The process had, however, started, but why? The explanation most often pointed to is changed habits on the part of Shah Tahmäsb I at this time,

43 or else what is presumed to be a deterioration in his eyesight.

44 Those arguing for the former possibility refer to the progressively strengthening religious convictions of the king as he entered mature age, convictions that in 1555 led to an edict banning carnal pleasures, such as bordellos, wine and music. Although the king had begun to give proof of his own penitence some twenty years before this decree, this did not represent a declaration of hostility to art; indeed, it is in painting that the change in tone can first be sensed. From around 1535 one can feel, especially in certain pages of the great Tahmäsb Sähnäme (formerly known as the Houghton Sähnäme) executed at this time that instead of works showing the carefree life of the court a tendency towards a more severe mood became discernible. Such a painting, for example, is The Nightmare of Zahhäk (folio 28 verso)

45

one of the finest attributed to MTr Mosavver. Those who suspect that the changes were motivated by the weakening of the royal eyesight draw attention to the fact that even in 1555 Shah Tahmäsb did not ban painting - too many demonstrably court works have survived for this to have happened. In fact a few of his painters continued to enjoy his confidence, but instead of meticulous book illustration requiring a large apparatus, by this time he had begun to give preference to mural painting, a gerne that could be produced at more modest expense but striking to the eye nevertheless.

46 It could be that the court library-atelier was not slimmed down deliberately, but many remained without work even so. Some artists had to leave because they had linked themselves too openly to members of the royal household who in time became personae non gratae, when in the middle of the century Shah Tahmäsb stabilised his power by changing the social elite. Those whom the king "permitted" to leave the court either moved abroad or withdrew to provincial capitals, trying their hand at cheaper genres and stepping out with these into embryonic market conditions. Such a genre was the single-sheet painting with few figures, which initially, as we have seen, was drawn from the manuscript illustrations still practised in the ketäbkäne. After the first signs became recognizable from around 1535, the change entered a new phase in the 1540s: it was at this time that the traditional practice of book illustration came to an end (for example, the Tahmäsb Sähnäme, the British Library Kamse of Nezami). It was at this time at the latest that the abovementioned album leaves appeared, and it was at this time that the shah sold, for 1000 gold tomans, one of his leading court painters, Mir Mosavver, to the Mughal emperor Homäyün, who was then spending time in exile in Tabriz.

47 This being so, the appliqué demonstrates that it was made before these developments, albeit a short time before. A reference to this is, for example, that details soon rising to become autonomous themes here still merge into the narrative and decorative context. Likewise it declares that the central composition was still being shaped according to the structural principles of Tabriz court art, namely in the unity of Behzädian classicism and the bold caricaturism developed in the Turkoman period that refined the humour of the details with the harmony of the whole. For an analogy it is sufficient to mention the famous miniatures of shah Tahmâsb's great manuscripts as manifestations of this spirit. The stylistic fusion of the Tahmäsb era from which these outstanding achievements of Persian book art stem was bom of the endeavours of the court ketäbkäne, although its creation is often attributed to the genius of a single artist. It is undeniable that a great deal of the most beautiful Tabriz paintings is linked to the name of SolCän Mohammad, who headed the studio. The stages of his life and career are scarcely known; concerning their length opinions differ, but they probably began under the Turkomans and left off after 1540. There are only three works known to be by him, but all three are extraordinary and provide a basis for the attribution of a whole series of additional