Left side of a double-page album folio: Outside a Royal Encampment (recto) and Calligraphy, Persian Verses (verso) (c. 1485): Art, History and Details

Left side of a double-page album folio: Outside a Royal Encampment (recto) and Calligraphy, Persian Verses (verso) (c. 1485) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Bihzad (Iranian, active 1470–1506).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The painting is the left side of a double composition; at the upper left are musicians who provide ambient entertainment. A cook prepares meat over a brazier, while a servant brings kebab on a shallow bowl. The unfinished state of this painting reveals the artist's process of creating underdrawings that are filled with color. The verso has an example of calligraphy.

Object facts

• Title: Left side of a double-page album folio: Outside a Royal Encampment (recto) and Calligraphy, Persian Verses (verso)
• Date: c. 1485
• Creator attribution: Bihzad (Iranian, active 1470–1506)
• Culture: Afghanistan or Iran, Timurid period (1370–1501)
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: opaque watercolor, ink, and gold on paper
• Collection: Islamic Art
• Department: Islamic Art
• Accession number: 1944.490

A detail from the museum

Intoxicated, a man in blue at the lower right has fallen.

Collection credit

Edward L. Whittemore Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Martin, F. R. The Miniature Painting and Painters of Persia, India and Turkey, from the 8th to the 18th Century. London: B. Quaritch, 1912.
• Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), and Maurice Sven Dimand. A Guide to an Exhibition of Islamic Miniature Painting and Book Illumination. [Portland, Me.]: [The Southworth Press], 1933.
• Hollis, Howard. "Three Iranian Miniatures." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 32, no. 4 (April 1945): 35–41.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.