Word: safavid
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...Magnificent: Art, Architecture, and Ceremonial at the Ottoman Court.” Which, you can say to your prospective employer during a job interview, is about way more than the Magnificent sultan himself. There’s an entire week of comparison to the Timurid dynasty and the Safavid, and Mughal empires...
...region became a buffer zone for conflict between the Shi'ite Safavid Empire and the Ottoman Turks. Fearful that Shi'ite Islam would spread to Asia Minor, the Turks captured Baghdad and, with the exception of a Safavid period in the 17th century, stayed there until World...
...decided that it would be nice to bring together the works of that little known period. From his desk in the Fogg, Welch composed a letter to the director of the British Library reference division, the caretaker of one of the two great works of the early Safavid period, asking for his cooperation. "I thought they would scream with pain and say 'What do you mean?' " Welch says...
...Welch was dead wrong. The people at the British Museum liked his idea, as did a number of private donors and museums. Aided by a small yet fanatical team of academics and collectors, Welch traced the whereabouts of the early Safavid paintings, aiming to assemble the greatest collection of 16th century Iranian painting brought together since--surprise--the 16th century. Five years later, that exhibition has already made its way through the British Library in London and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Dubbed "Wonders of the Age" (from a manuscript of the period), the collection now occupies Gallery...
...more than art, the Safavid collection tells a story. It is a story of court intrigue and suspicion, of endless gore ("in a delightful way" says Welch), of fights against beasties (half-lions and half-apes) and hunting campaigns in the Iranian countryside. Beneath all of this lies a complicated story, one that Welch and his partner--Martin Bernard Dickson of Princeton--have deciphered after years of work. "People used to say it was impossible to say who painted what," Welch says, but all that has changed. "I looked harder and longer at paintings than most people do," he explains...