Word: safavid
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...16th century in the courts of Persia formed one of the supreme periods in the history of art: a Middle Eastern equivalent, perhaps, of Florence between 1450 and 1500, or 16th century Venice, or Paris between 1880 and 1930. It was mainly in Tabriz, the capital of the Safavid dynasty, under the patronage of a succession of highly civilized Muslim shahs and princes, that the art of miniature painting was brought to a pitch of aesthetic and technical perfection that had not been imagined before, and has not been approached since...
...fruits, compressed into a few square inches of surface. They are also fresher than most European Renaissance paintings because they have been protected between the covers of books, so that the pigment has not faded through exposure to light. The one exception to this is the silver leaf that Safavid artists customarily used to represent water: it has tarnished, turning the garden fountains, the rivers and waterfalls to soot...
...combination of utter vividness, precision of detail and fantasticated, rhythm ical design breathes from nearly all the miniatures, but especially from the work of the Safavid court artist Sultan-Muham mad, for whom this show is in effect a retrospective. In one image of a legendary Persian hero, Rustam Sleeping While Rakhsh Fights the Lion, there is a dazzling play between abstraction and observation...
...exhibit, entitled "Wonders of the Age: Masterpieces of Early Safavid Paintings, 1501-1576," premiered earlier this year in London...
...Safavid dynasty paintings are mostly parts of original manuscripts by anonymous artists, Welsh added...