Portable images on paper, cloth, and clay for the theme for this exhibition, exploring the fluidity and transmission of language and culture through images on manuscripts, textiles and ceramics created between the 1200s and 1800s. Through the objects on show, Painting the Persianate World introduces a view of cultures in flux through migration and contact. The movement of people from regions that comprise today’s Iran and Afghanistan to present-day Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh – and with them the Persian language – formed what has come to be known as the Persianate world. Manuscript illustrations, dye-painted textiles, and decorated ceramics played an important role in binding these regions together. Such highly portable and functional objects visually transported manners of behaving, dressing, and eating, as well as storytelling and image-making.
A commonly used word for painting in Persian, tasvir, which also means ‘forming’ and ‘fashioning’. The broad application of the term underscores one of painting’s key functions – to depict, or give form to, images. The materials that painters employ and the techniques they use help to shape how their pictures look. Painting on paper, for example, involves the use of mineral- and plant-based colours, pigment binders, and fine hair brushes. Painting on textiles, on the other hand, requires the use of plant-based dyes, wax, mordants (chemicals that fix the dye in the fibres), and a bamboo pen (kalam) used on cotton cloth. To make images on clay, one uses a brush to paint with coloured clays and mineral-based glazes. The painter’s role, no matter their chosen medium, is to form images from these humble and precious substances.
Epic Tales and Adventures in Persianate Painting
Another Persianate word connected with these painted works is nama. Nama translates into a number of English words, among them: book, tales, adventures, story, account, life, and memoirs. Mughal painting was created largely as an integral element of the production of namas in book form, for various royal collections in India. Seven Persian painters, who had come from Iran to India in the 1550s, had previously contributed to the monumental and celebrated Shahnama (Book of Kings) for Shah Tahmasp (r 1524-76) of Safavid Iran. From the 13th to 17th centuries, Persian literary masterpieces, such as the Shahnama by Firdoswi and the Khamsah by Nizami, were used as sources of inspiration for painters of various schools and styles of Persian/Islamic visual arts.
Persian miniature began to flourish under the Ilkhanid dynasty’s (1256-1335) patronage in the 13th century, when great focus was put on illuminating and illustrating books. The Mongolian dynasty ruled over areas of present-day Iran, most of Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, and western Pakistan. This form of miniature painting reached its zenith under the patronage of the rulers of the Timurid dynasty (circa 1370-1507), during the 14th and 15th centuries, where the cities like Tabriz and Herat were significant centres of manuscript production.
Timurid Art
By bringing craftsmen from different conquered lands to the capital in Samarkand, Timur (1336-11405), or Tamurlane, initiated one of the most brilliant period in Islamic art. Timurid art and architecture provided inspiration to lands stretching from Anatolia to parts of India. Though Timur’s extensive empire itself was relatively short-lived, his descendants continued to rule over Transoxiana as leading patrons of Islamic art. Through their patronage, the eastern Islamic world became a prominent cultural centre, with Herat, the new Timurid capital, as its beating heart. Included in this exhibition is a selection of painted images from the 13th to 19th centuries, all from Greater Iran and the Indian subcontinent, using three mediums: paper, cloth, and clay.
This movement of people from today’s Iran and Afghanistan to present-day Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh brought with them the Persian language, formed from what has come to be known as the Persianate world. Manuscript illustrations, dye-painted textiles, and decorated ceramics played an important role in binding these diverse regions together. Therefore, such highly portable and functional objects, such as paintings, were a method of visually transporting manners of behaviour, fashions in dress, and tastes in eating, as well as storytelling and image-making depicted in these works. These migration routes have been important conduits and crossroads for centuries.
Painters also moved readily to find work and carried their expert knowledge of image-making across these regions. The use of transparent paper and deer skin allowed them to easily copy and transfer designs. Aided by the availability of such materials, they helped to forge and spread these painted images to the larger Persianate world.
The Migration of People and Artists
Between the 14th and 19th centuries, the migration of people and the use of the Persian language intensified, establishing new roots. Elites within this vast cosmopolitan realm shared a taste for certain kinds of storytelling, elaborate poems, and political thought. Themes such as royal justice and divine love were especially favoured. Authors penned texts in Persian as well as in other languages such as Braj Bhasha, a precursor to Hindi that communities in the Persianate world also used. Persianate painters, for their part, drew on a common body of pictorial motifs, compositions, and designs, creating a streamlined visual world that bridged religious, linguistic, and cultural divides.
The painted images in the exhibition were all eminently transportable – some objects were made expressly for export, while others entered into broader circulation as a result of inheritance, gift exchange, or sale. Many of these art works exist today in fragmented form, for example, as leaves cut out of albums or books, or as tiles detached from ceramic architectural friezes, since many collectors of these works during the 19th and 20th centuries had little interest in their original contexts.
Until 7 July, 2024, painting the Persianate world, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA, smith.edu
