Youth Holding a Pomegranate; Illustration from a Single Page Manuscript (c.1600–1650): Art, History and Details

Youth Holding a Pomegranate; Illustration from a Single Page Manuscript (c.1600–1650) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Riza-yi Abbasi (Iranian).

The work and its context

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

This single painting of a youth holding a favored pomegranate reflects the style of the most gifted painter at the court of Shah ‘Abbas, Riza-yi ‘Abbasi, whose work inspired numerous adaptations and copies by other artists. In this painting, the youth is attired less extravagantly—with less gold thread than those in the two paintings nearby—presumably conveying a lower status. Gold thread was so expensive that rulers occasionally burned old fabrics for the monetary value of the gold.

Object facts

• Title: Youth Holding a Pomegranate; Illustration from a Single Page Manuscript
• Date: c.1600–1650
• Creator attribution: Riza-yi Abbasi (Iranian)
• Culture: Iran, Isfahan, Safavid period (1501-1722)
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: opaque watercolor and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 15.3 x 8 cm (6 x 3 1/8 in.); Overall: 27.7 x 16.4 cm (10 7/8 x 6 7/16 in.)
• Collection: Islamic Art
• Department: Islamic Art
• Accession number: 1947.497

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hollis, Howard C. “Two Seventeenth-Century Persian Miniatures.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 35, no. 4 (1948): 63–64.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

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.