Princes, Dervishes and Dragons: The Tile Arcade from Safavid Isfahan (C. 1685-95)

Toward the end of the nineteenth century much of Iran’s architectural heritage gave way to urban development. Among the casualties were the seventeenth-century Safavid palaces of Isfahan. Local dealers salvaged a series of astonishingly beautiful pictorial arch-shaped panels composed of cuerda seca tiles from one of these. Beginning in 1911 whole panels and many single tiles were sold through Hagop Kevorkian. The authors have assembled (digitally) 36 friezes once part of this set.

The iconographic program consisted of three themes: secular pastimes (picnics, hunt, games), Persian literary episodes, and religious festivals (e.g., the Ashura). The first two themes have a long history in Iranian mural painting, but the third was new and will be of interest to cultural historians. The friezes are stylistically datable to c. 1685-95. One clue to the identity of the original site is the duplication of almost all the friezes. The authors deduce that the scenes were paired across a courtyard and suggest three possible sites. Fully assembled, the suite emerges as a hitherto unknown, outstanding creation that should be added to the canon of Safavid art.