The Persian painter Kamal al-Din Bihzad was known as "the wonder of the age" (Roxburgh, Persian 179). Not much known about his life, but still Bizhad is considered one of the two greatest Persian painters of all time, second only to the legndary Mani (Bahari 16). He was called by court chroniclers of the Safavids, Ottomans, and Mughals the "Unique One of the Age" or "Master of the Age." These kinds of titles were not something royal writers of the three greatest powers of sixteenth-century Islamic Asia bestowed lightly. (Barry133) Why is Bihzad so highly praised? What properties of his work make his paintings so appealing? What characteristics of his style and techniques raise Bihzad above all other Persian painters?
There are four distinct categories of Bihzads work including: portraitts or events from life, depiction of historical events (with imaginative interpretations), book illustrations, and double page illustrations of imaginary scenes. (Bahari 47) The two masters that had the most influence on his art were Amir Ruhallah Mirak Khurasani, who wove fine detail and illumination in his work, and Mawlana Wali Allah whose style was very expressive with delicate brushwork. (Roxburgh, Persian 45) Mirak was Bihzad's adoptive father and teacher (Roxburgh, Persian 222). It is only fitting that such a relationship would have the egreatest impact on Bhizad's art. Two Antelopes and Two Lynx (fig. 1) is great evidence of the influence Wali had on Bihzad. The twisty tree is basically a copy of a tree from a previous work by Wali (Bahari 54). Bihzad grew up during the mid-fifteenth-century conflict fought between rival princes over the empire of Shah Rukh. Some scholars believe Bihzad's work often reflects the violence he saw. (Barry...
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Bahari, Ebadollah. Bizhad, Master of Persian Painting. London: I. B. Tauris Publishers, 1996.
Barry, Michael. Figurative Art in Medieval Islam and the Riddle of Bizhad of Herat. Paris: International Publications, Inc. 2004.
Blair, Sheila S., and Jonathan M. Bloom. The Art and Architecture of Islam 1250-1800. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.
Grabar, Oleg. Mostly Miniatures: An Introduction to Persian Painting. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Lentz, Thoma W. “Changing Worlds: Bihzad and the New Painting.” In Persian Masters: Five Centuries of Painting, edited by S. R. Canby. Bombay. Pp. 39–54. 1990.
Roxburgh, David .J. “Kamal al-Din Bizhad and Authorship in Persianate Painting.” Muqarnas 17: 119-46. 2000.
Roxburgh, David .J. The Persian Album, 1400-1600: From Dispersal to Collection. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
Information from the textbook and Hays’s article help illuminate the events depicted and their significance in culture and art of the New Kingdom, and how the style ties into the art of the time.
Ibn Munqidh, Usama. "From Memoirs." McNeill, William and Marilyn Robinson Waldman. The Islamic World. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1973. 184-206.
I learned about many significant artwork and artist in this class. This class provided me with a better understanding of the history of the world Art, but also helped me understand the development of art style. However, among all of these precious pieces of artwork, there are two special ones that caught my attention: The Chinese Qin Terracotta Warriors and The Haniwa. Each of them represents the artist’s stylistic characteristics and cultural context. Although they represented different art of rulers, historical values, and scenes, there were visible similarities.
Nagle, D. Brendan. “The Second Persian Invasion” The Ancient World; A social and Cultural History. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002.
Springfield, IL: Charles Thomas Publishers, 2009. Print. Necipoglu, Gulru. Muqarnas, Vol 25: Frontiers of Islamic Art and Architecture.
Shahîd, Irfan. Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century. Washington, D.C: Dumbarton Oaks, 1984.
The Byzantine Empire was a primarily Christian empire whose reign started in 330 A.D and ended in 1453 A.D with the capturing of the its capital, Constantinople by the Muslim Sultan Mehmed II. In the years following the fall of the Byzantines, many of the Christian basilicas were transformed into mosques for Islamic worship, inspiring many artists to create works that embodied their religious politics. One of the pieces created following the fall of the Byzantine Empire is the painting of Yusuf Fleeing Zulayhka, created in 1488 by Kamal al-Din Bihzad, a famous Persian painter who worked under the patronage of several Persian sultans. The illustration depicts Yusuf’s struggle to escape his master’s wife Zulaykha as she chases him through her elaborate palace in an attempt to seduce him. The representation was made using paint, ink and gold, and features jewel-like colors in order to portray the extravagancy of the palace Zulayhka has built specifically for the seduction of Yusuf (Stokstad 286). This essay will assess three accounts of the story of Yusuf and Zulaykha and the reasoning behind why the narrative is often labelled as a cautionary tale and of what kind.
In "Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm, and the Museum," Finbarr Barry Flood expresses many ideas concerning Islamic iconoclasm. His focus was on the ."..iconoclastic practices of Muslims living in the eastern Islamic world, especially Afghanistan and India." Flood discusses issues with traditional patterns considering Islamic iconoclasm and the "many paradoxes" that "complicate" our understanding of Islamic iconoclasm. Throughout this essay we become familiar with "essentialist conceptions of Muslim iconoclasm" as well as "political aspects of what has largely been conceived of as a theological impulse." These points later provide a basis for analyzing the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha by the Taliban in March 2001. "It will be argued that their obliteration indexed not a timeless response to figuration but a calculated engagement with a culturally specific discourse of images at a particular historical moment."
In Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi’s childhood experiences allow her to demonstrate the cultural changes that occurred in post-revolutionary Iran, as well as those perpetrated by western culture. In Persepolis, western culture plays a major role in the author’s attempt to dispel the
Lesko, Barbara, "Queen Khamerernebty II and Her Sculpture," in Ancient Egyptian and Mediterranean Studies, (Providence, Rhode Island, 1998), 158.
...ere was a very particular exposition of some of his work, called Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. It consisted in pages of regular notebooks, but with observations, sketches, ideas and poetry fragments, either from popular culture or from world history and races. These pieces were very unique and the sketches had a special touch that I had never seen before in any other artwork. Basquiat’s work was very simple, but with strong ideas and a clear message. That was the beauty of his work.
The question arises to many historians that when did this work originated. It has been said that it was originated in Persia in pre-Islamic time period and then later translated into Arabic. The Norton Anthology of World MasterPieces states:
G. Esposito, John L (2002) Islam; What Everyone Should Know. New York. Oxford University Press Inc.
"Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History." The Achaemenid Persian Empire (550–330 B.C.). N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2014.
Kenneth Jost. 2005. “Understanding Islam.” Annual Editions: Anthropology 11/12, 34th Edition. Elvio Angeloni. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.