Arts of the Islamic World and India, including Fine Rugs and Carpets

Arts of the Islamic World and India, including Fine Rugs and Carpets

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 41. Bizhan slays Nastihan and stems the Turanian night raid, illustrated folio (f.328r.) from the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp, attributed to Bashdan Qara, Persia, Tabriz, Royal Atelier, circa 1525-35.

Bizhan slays Nastihan and stems the Turanian night raid, illustrated folio (f.328r.) from the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp, attributed to Bashdan Qara, Persia, Tabriz, Royal Atelier, circa 1525-35

Auction Closed

April 26, 01:36 PM GMT

Estimate

4,000,000 - 6,000,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

gouache and ink heightened with gold on paper, text written in black nasta'liq script in four columns upper right, one column lower right, rules in gold black, red and blue, gold-sprinkled margins, verso with 22 lines to the page in black nasta'liq script arranged in four columns with an illuminated panel


painting: 27 by 20.2cm.

leaf: 47 by 31.7cm.

Commissioned by the Safavid Emperor Shah Isma'il, circa 1522. 
Completed under the patronage of his son Shah Tahmasp at the royal atelier,  
Tabriz, circa 1525-40. 
Presented in 1568 by Shah Tahmasp to the Ottoman Sultan Selim II (r.1566-74). 
In the collection of Baron Edmund de Rothschild, Paris, 1903-34. 
By Descent to Baron Maurice de Rothschild, Paris, 1934-57. 
His estate 1957-59. 
Arthur A. Houghton Jr., USA, 1959-88. 
Christie's London, 11 October 1988, lot 12.
Private collection, Europe.
S.C. Welch, A King’s Book of Kings, The Shah-nameh of Shah Tahmasp, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1972, p.194.
M.B. Dickson & S.C. Welch, The Houghton Shahnameh, Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, 1981, vol.II, pl.174.
S.R. Canby, The Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2011, pp.194 (illus.) and 285.
S.R. Canby, The Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp: The Persian Book of Kings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2014, p.236.
The Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts, Tehran, 2021.
Exposition d'art Islamique, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 1903.