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

Royal Reception in a Landscape, right folio from a double-page frontispiece of a Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Firdausi (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 verso of this folio is the first half of a double-page frontispiece now detached from a Shah-nama manuscript (see CMA 1956.10 for the second half of the frontispiece). The scene does not illustrate a narrative from the Shah-nama, but is likely a representation of 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, right folio from a double-page frontispiece of a Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Firdausi (940–1019 or 1025)
• Date: 1444
• Culture: Iran, Shiraz, Timurid period (1370-1501)
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: opaque watercolor, gold, and silver on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 32.5 x 22.1 cm (12 13/16 x 8 11/16 in.); Recto Image: 27.7 x 10.3 cm (10 7/8 x 4 1/16 in.); Verso image: 26.3 x 20.7 cm (10 3/8 x 8 1/8 in.)
• Collection: Islamic Art
• Department: Islamic Art
• Accession number: 1945.169

A detail from the museum

Seemingly uninterested in the emissaries and gifts, a prince kneels with six royal women under an open tent and tries to coax one to have a drink.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Sarre, Friedrich Paul Theodor, F. R. Martin, Max van Berchem, Moriz Dreger, Ernst Kühnel, Camillo List, and Severin Schröder. Die Ausstellung von Meisterwerken muhammedanischer Kunst in München, 1910. München: F. Bruckmann, 1912.
• Schulz, Ph.W. Die persisch-islamische Miniaturmalerei. Ein Beitrag zur Kunstgeschichte Irans. Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1914.
• Diez, Ernst. Die Kunst der Islamischen Volker. Berlin-Neubabelsberg: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion M.BH., 1917.

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.