IRAN AND THE WORLD IN THE SAFAVID AGE
Abstracts

Sims, Dr. Eleanor, Independent Scholar, London, Late Safavid Large Scale Paintings: East of the Sun and West of the Moon

For millennia, Iran has demonstrated a taste for imported elements in its material culture; equally, it has always demonstrated an ability to absorb these foreign and exotic elements, rework them, and transform them into characteristically Iranian forms.  Painting in the later Safavid period is no exception to this tendency.

Safavid buildings both in Isfahan as well as in the Armenian quarter across the Zayanda Rud in New Julfa were intensely decorated with murals; they are one manifestation of a specific stylistic development and have been known for many decades.  The existence of a body of nearly life-size independent paintings in oil on canvas is a genre of more recent focus, examples having come to broader attention only in the last quarter of the twentieth century; their importance for the later development of Zand and Qajar painting was quickly realized and commented upon.  What has not always been noted, however, is the degree to which elements from both East and West - from Mughal India as well as Europe - contributed to the content, as well as the fundamental styles, that both genres of Safavid large-scale paintings together represent.  This paper will explore examples of foreign and exotic influences from East and West of Iran in the later painting of Safavid Isfahan and comment on their significance.

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