f - THE BATTLE BETWEEN THE SASANIAN KING KHUSRAU PARVIS AND BAHRAM CHUBINEH, ILLUMINATED LEAF FROM THE SHAHNAMA OF FIRDAWSI, TURKISH, 16TH CENTURY

Formerly in the Hagop Kevorkian Collection, sold in these rooms, 6th December 1967, lot 42

This miniature is closely comparable to two leaves from an unidentified manuscript in the late Dr. Edwin Binney's collection. The miniatures exhibit a similarly crowded field of horses and warriors in a mountain scene. Abstracted rocks and trees in the left of the foreground break through into the margin, as do the army's pennants at the top of the scene. Although the Binney miniatures were catalogued as Persian in 1966, the golden sky and grouping of the army suggest a Turkish origin and the two miniatures were reassessed as Turkish and dated to 1580 in the Binney catalogue. It has been suggested that Turkish artists working on the manuscript from which these miniatures originated were working in the Tabriz style, as did those Turkish artists employed on the Houghton Shahnama (Binney 1979, cat 21a&b, p.44-46). It is likely that the current miniature is a product of the same tradition.