Royal Reception in a Landscape, left folio from the double frontispiece of a Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Firdausi (Persian, about 940–1019 or 1025) (1444): Art, History and Details

Royal Reception in a Landscape, left folio from the double frontispiece of a Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Firdausi (Persian, about 940–1019 or 1025) (1444) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The painting on the recto of this folio is the second half of a double-page frontispiece now detached from a Shahnama manuscript (see CMA 1945.169 for the first half of the frontispiece). The scene does not illustrate a narrative from the Shahnama, but likely represents the courtly audience for whose entertainment the manuscript was created. The date and style of the painting indicate that it was made during the reign of the Timurid dynasty in Shiraz, Iran.

Object facts

• Title: Royal Reception in a Landscape, left folio from the double frontispiece of a Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Firdausi (Persian, about 940–1019 or 1025)
• Date: 1444
• Culture: Iran, Shiraz, Timurid period (1370-1501)
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: opaque watercolor, ink, gold and silver on paper
• Dimensions: Recto Image: 26.1 x 20.7 cm (10 1/4 x 8 1/8 in.); Overall: 32.7 x 22 cm (12 7/8 x 8 11/16 in.)
• Collection: Islamic Art
• Department: Islamic Art
• Accession number: 1956.10

A detail from the museum

From the upper left two trained cheetahs, a falcon, and horses are led into the scene.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Schulz, Philipp Walter. Die persisch-islamische Miniaturmalerei. Ein Beitrag zur Kunstgeschichte Irans. Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1914.
• Ackerman, Phyllis. Guide to the Exhibition of Persian Art. New York: Iranian Institute of America, 1940.
• Robinson, B.W. “The Illustrated Persian Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 34 (September 1952): 69–80.

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.