The Making of the Artist in Late Timurid Painting

by Lamia Balafrej

Overview

In the absence of a tradition of self-portraiture, how could artists signal their presence within a painting? Centred on late Timurid manuscript painting (ca. 1470-1500), this book reveals that pictures could function as the painter’s delegate, charged with the task of centring and defining artistic work, even as they did not represent the artist’s likeness. Influenced by the culture of the majlis, an institutional gathering devoted to intricate literary performances and debates, late Timurid painters used a number of strategies to shift manuscript painting from an illustrative device to a self-reflective object, designed to highlight the artist’s imagination and manual dexterity. These strategies include visual abundance, linear precision, the incorporation of inscriptions addressing aspects of the painting and the artist’s signature. Focusing on one of the most iconic manuscripts of the Persianate tradition, the Cairo Bustan made in late Timurid Herat and bearing the signatures of the painter Bihzad, this book explores Persian manuscript painting as a medium for artistic performance and self-representation, a process by which artistic authority was shaped and discussed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474437448
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	10/31/2024
Series:	Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.61(h) x (d)

About the Author

Lamia Balafrej is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Painting about Painting

1. Pictorial Preface

2. Writing on the Image

3. Potential World

4. Calligraphic Line

5. Wondrous Signature

Epilogue: Manuscripts in Motion

Bibliography

What People are Saying About This

Marianna Shreve Simpson

An impressive and compelling work of scholarship that promotes a radical reorientation for the study of illustrated Persian manuscripts. At the same time it offers a detailed investigation, through original perspectives, of the paintings in a celebrated, and hitherto inadequately studied volume produced at the court of the last Timurid ruler Sultan Husayn Bayqara in Herat… This book will be of enormous interest to art historians and Islamic studies scholars in general and specialists in Persian painting in particular, who will appreciate the author’s sophisticated approach and multi-faceted readings of the Bustan paintings – so long-admired and yet so cursorily-studied.

Charles Melville

This stimulating and original study draws on both the antecedents and the legacies of Behzad’s art from the 14^th to the 16^th century in Iran and Transoxiana and will prompt a fresh look at our appreciation of Persian miniature painting.

The study places the Bustan manuscript in a sort of shifting continuum of tradition, response and innovation that both exalted and obscured the individuality of the artist.

Editorial Reviews

Balafrej’s well-constructed work offers both a thorough analysis of a specific pictorial cycle ascribed to an individual painter, as well as a number of reflections that apply more broadly to cultural production in the medieval and early modern Persianate societies.

Eurasian Studies 19 (2021) - Viola Allegranzi

An impressive and compelling work of scholarship that promotes a radical reorientation for the study of illustrated Persian manuscripts. At the same time it offers a detailed investigation, through original perspectives, of the paintings in a celebrated, and hitherto inadequately studied volume produced at the court of the last Timurid ruler Sultan Husayn Bayqara in Herat… This book will be of enormous interest to art historians and Islamic studies scholars in general and specialists in Persian painting in particular, who will appreciate the author’s sophisticated approach and multi-faceted readings of the Bustan paintings – so long-admired and yet so cursorily-studied.

Marianna Shreve Simpson

This stimulating and original study draws on both the antecedents and the legacies of Behzad’s art from the 14th to the 16th century in Iran and Transoxiana and will prompt a fresh look at our appreciation of Persian miniature painting.
The study places the Bustan manuscript in a sort of shifting continuum of tradition, response and innovation that both exalted and obscured the individuality of the artist.

Charles Melville

Balafrej’s well-constructed work offers both a thorough analysis of a specific pictorial cycle ascribed to an individual painter, as well as a number of reflections that apply more broadly to cultural production in the medieval and early modern Persianate societies.

Viola Allegranzi, Austrian Academy of Sciences - Eurasian Studies 19 (2021)

"This stimulating and original study draws on both the antecedents and the legacies of Behzad's art from the 14th to the 16th century in Iran and Transoxiana and will prompt a fresh look at our appreciation of Persian miniature painting. The study places the Bustan manuscript in a sort of shifting continuum of tradition, response and innovation that both exalted and obscured the individuality of the artist". — Charles Melville, Pembroke College, Cambridge

"An impressive and compelling work of scholarship that promotes a radical reorientation for the study of illustrated Persian manuscripts. At the same time it offers a detailed investigation, through original perspectives, of the paintings in a celebrated, and hitherto inadequately studied volume produced at the court of the last Timurid ruler Sultan Husayn Bayqara in Herat... This book will be of enormous interest to art historians and Islamic studies scholars in general and specialists in Persian painting in particular, who will appreciate the author's sophisticated approach and multi-faceted readings of the Bustan paintings - so long-admired and yet so cursorily-studied". — Marianna Shreve Simpson, Visiting Scholar, University of Pennsylvania

From the Publisher