Shahnama Project : Shahnama

Firdausi

Shahnama Project

<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>A single folio from a mid-late 16th-century Shiraz manuscript.</p><p>It became a part of the collection of the Fitzwilliam museum in 1943, having come as a gift of Mrs Sigismund Geotze. In the archives of the museum there is a note by Professor D.S.Robertson from 19 February 1944, where he attributes the painting to the year of 1570.</p><p>The miniature was cut out, mounted on cardboard and framed in the East. Probably the folio with the painting was the recto side, which can explain why the upper left corner of the picture suffered more than all other parts of it and had to be trimmed during the framing.</p><p>Both the calligraphy and the painting were executed by refined professional Persian hands. The text is written in neat calligraphic nasta‘liq in Indian ink within “cloud” ornament, surrounded by the golden interlinear filling with intercolomnal red and yellow borders of floral ornament.</p><p>The paper is Oriental, creamy, slightly glossy.</p></p>