Shahnama Project : Diez Album

Firdausi

Shahnama Project

<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>Loose pages of an album, put together by Heinrich Friedrich von Diez in Istanbul, c. 1790, from albums in the Library of the Topkapi Palace. The album contains a number of paintings from the Shahnama, some of which are very very old (early 14th century): of these 15 have been marked by Ipsiroglu as Shahnama. No text accompanies any of the paintings, which makes it in many cases difficult to ascertain whether they belong to the Shahnama or not. The paintings are contained in passe-partouts, sometimes separately, sometimes a few together, depending on the size. In total 68 'Seiten', pages altogether. It is unclear whether these paintings ever belonged to mss. According to Hartmut-Ortwin Feistel, there are many mistakes in the index of Ipsiroglu.</p><p>The catalogue of Ipsiroglu divides the paintings in groups, based on a chronological order. In the passe-partouts the paintings seem to appear often in arbitrary order. 37 paintings have been described here as Shahnama, mostly on the basis of Ipsiroglu. The paintings are usually within borders, but the painting seems to go on underneath, and is often cut out roughly along the lines of the border (GvdB).See Mazhar S. Ipsiroglu, Saray-Alben. Diez'sche Klebebande aus den Berliner Sammlungen, Wiesbaden, 1964</p></p>