Goobi - ba0d8 - 2020-08-02 18:16:45+0000
Goobi
Disguised as a dragon, Faridun tests the character of his three sons, folio from the Book of Kings (Shahnama).
Dateable to the era of late Mongol Ilkhanid rule in Iran (the 1330s), a dramatic but fragmentary manuscript known as the Great Mongol Shahnama (and also as the Demotte Shahnama) is today dispersed across many international collections, including eleven folios in the Chester Beatty collection. Heavily worn, the manuscript was extensively restored in late nineteenth-century Tehran, probably at the Gulistan Palace library: the folios were trimmed, remargined, and renumbered, with missing text supplemented on new paper folios, written out by Tehran calligraphers following fourteenth-century style. Many of the paintings were retouched, with occasional Persian commentary written onto them. At the start of the twentieth century, the manuscript was sold to a Paris-based dealer, Georges Demotte (d. 1923), reportedly with another dealer Dikran Kelekian as his buying-partner. From 1913, Demotte began selling single illustrated folios cut from the manuscript to art collectors and museums, in Europe and the USA. He had not only disbound the manuscript for its paintings, in eight cases he had folios split vertically - thus splicing apart the page - in order to separate two paintings from either side of one folio. He then pasted each painting onto separate folios, containing text only (usually irrelevant to the painting subject), and sold these folios separately. By the time Beatty bought his eleven folios (CBL Per 111.1 to Per 111.11, seven with paintings) from Demotte's firm in October 1937, he would have known the so-called "Demotte Shahnama" well: its fifty-eight (known) illustrated folios had been widely exhibited and published. At the 1931 International Exhibition of Persian Art in London, Beatty's librarian Joan Kingsford Wood saw this painting (Per 111.2), and sketched the dragon in her copy of the exhibition brochure.
Folio, ink, colours and gold on paper, Persian text in naskh script, with framed caption (Faridun's test of his sons) and painting (both on recto), and second caption (Faridun's partition of his territory among his sons, on verso), from a dispersed Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi, Tabriz, Iran, c. 1330, folio remargined and repaired, Tehran, Iran, c. 1880-1900.
Disguised as a dragon, Faridun tests the character of his three sons, from the Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi
Per 111.2
Per_111_2
Persian collection
Persian (language)
Approved Category 2017/Manuscript/Codex/Folio / Bi-Folio (Codex)
Approved Place 2018/Middle East/Iran/Tabriz
Approved Place 2018/Middle East/Iran/Tabriz
Folio / Bi-Folio (Codex)
Naskh script
c. 1330
1330
1330
1335
1335
true
Approved Material 2018/Organic/Plant (material)/Plant fibre/Paper (material)
Approved Material 2018/Materials/Coating material/Ink (material)
Approved Material 2018/Materials/Colourant (material)/Pigment (material)
Approved Material 2018/Inorganic/Metal (material)/Non-ferrous metal/Gold
Paper (material)
Ink (material)
Pigment (material)
Gold
GOOD
592 mm x 400 mm (height x width)
art
Unknown
Unknown
Tabriz
cll
Unknown
Unknown
Tabriz
Chester Beatty Library
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https://chesterbeatty.ie/
mailto:photographicservices@cbl.ie
https://viewer.cbl.ie/viewer/ppnresolver?id=Per_111_2
https://viewer.cbl.ie/viewer/ppnresolver?id=Per_111_2