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

Left side of a double-page album folio: Outside a Royal Encampment (recto) (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)
• Date: c. 1485
• Creator attribution: Bihzad (Iranian, active 1470–1506)
• Culture: Afghanistan or Iran, Timurid period (1370–1501)
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: opaque watercolor and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 24.4 x 14.1 cm (9 5/8 x 5 9/16 in.); Overall: 27 x 17.2 cm (10 5/8 x 6 3/4 in.)
• Collection: Islamic Art
• Department: Islamic Art
• Accession number: 1944.490.a

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 (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.