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IRAN
AND THE WORLD IN THE SAFAVID AGE
Abstracts
Landau, Ms. Amy, Oxford University, The Oriental Institute, Oxford, The Transmission and Reception of Counter-Reformation Art and
Culture in Safavid Persia: The Armenian Contribution
This presentation will
address the role of the Armenians of New Julfa in the transmission
of Counter-Reformation art and culture, as well as its reception
by the Safavid elite. The
discussion will focus on one Persian monarch, Shah Sulaiman; an
Armenian church, likened to the Garden of Eden and Noah's Ark by
contemporaries; and an Armenian theologian-translator-artist,
Yovhannes Mrkuz.
It was under Shah
Sulaiman that a westernized mode of painting was systematically
developed and actively commissioned.
In the 1670s and 1680s his court painter Muhammad Zaman
executed a series of single-page paintings of biblical subject
matter. Muhammad
Zaman's prototypes originated from one of the most important
printing-houses of the Counter-Reformation.
The paper will discuss how these images were imported to
and circulated in Safavid Persia, and whether or not the original
context of these images was understood.
One
channel of the transmission of European art into Iran was the
Armenian community of New Julfa.
The focus will be on an unknown source for the decoration
of the magnificent Bethlehem Church.
This source is one of the most sophisticated aids for
visualizing Christian narratives ever published.
It is known to have travelled to the Mughal Empire and as
far east as the imperial court of China, but its presence and use
in Persia has yet to be analyzed.
Not
only was the Safavid court familiar with Counter-Reformation art,
but, as will be demonstrated, it was also introduced to debates
about the nature of images, which were rejuvenated after the
Council of Trent. Some
of the themes of these debates were communicated to the Shah by
prominent members of the New Julfa community, notably by the
Armenian scholar Yovhannes Mrkuz.
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