Princes, dervishes and dragons

the Tile Arcade from Safavid Isfahan (c. 1685–95)

Golombek, Lisa
Mason, Robert B.

Assembled digitally from worldwide collections, this Arcade of 36 colourful tile panels exposes for the first time religious themes as well as more traditional themes for architectural decoration, and adds a new work to the canon of seventeenth-century Persian art
Makes available a new corpus of Safavid pictorial art, the Safavid Tile Arcade
Presents new ways of re-creating this suite (using graphics technology), new insights into the black-line technique (cuerda seca; haft rangi), and identifying markers of the specific style of the panels (e.g., plant types)
The Safavid Tile Arcade is unique in its inclusion of Shi’i themes, such as Ashura celebrations. Stylistically these tiles are datable to c.1685–95, and the choice of themes may shed light on this period in the reign of Shah Sulayman (1666-94)
Presents evidence for the identification of the original site, with three possibilities being argued, including the Talar-i Tavileh (“Pavilion of the Stables”)
Uses various sources to trace the dispersal of the tile panels, including copies made in Iran during the nineteenth century, thus expanding knowledge about the dispersal of Iran’s cultural heritage
Toward the end of the nineteenth century much of Iran’s architectural heritage gave way to urban development. Among the casualties were the seventeenth-century Safavid palaces of Isfahan. Local dealers salvaged a series of astonishingly beautiful pictorial arch-shaped panels composed of cuerda seca tiles from one of these. Beginning in 1911 whole panels and many single tiles were sold through Hagop Kevorkian. The authors have assembled (digitally) 36 friezes once part of this set.
The iconographic program consisted of three themes: secular pastimes (picnics, hunt, games), Persian literary episodes, and religious festivals (e.g., the Ashura). The first two themes have a long history in Iranian mural painting, but the third was new and will be of interest to cultural historians. The friezes are stylistically datable to c. 1685-95. One clue to the identity of the original site is the duplication of almost all the friezes. The authors deduce that the scenes were paired across a courtyard and suggest three possible sites. Fully assembled, the suite emerges as a hitherto unknown, outstanding creation that should be added to the canon of Safavid art.