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

Royal Reception in a Landscape, right folio from the double frontispiece of a Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Firdausi (Persian, about 940–1019 or 1025) (verso) (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 the double frontispiece of a Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Firdausi (Persian, about 940–1019 or 1025) (verso)
• Date: 1444
• Culture: Iran, Shiraz, Timurid period (1370-1501)
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: opaque watercolor, gold, and silver on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 26.3 x 20.7 cm (10 3/8 x 8 1/8 in.); Overall: 32.5 x 22.1 cm (12 13/16 x 8 11/16 in.)
• Collection: Islamic Art
• Department: Islamic Art
• Accession number: 1945.169.b

A detail from the museum

A musician plays a harp that has been mounted over a stream, painted with now tarnished silver paint.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Shepherd, Dorothy G. “A Shāhnāmah Frontispiece.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art (December 1956) vol. 43, no. 10, 1956, pp. 213–217.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.

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.