IRAN--Miniaturist Paintings

Iran is famous for its miniaturist paintings. All this began about 1000 years BC when small murals were painted in the palaces and special buildings. In the 13th century, when the Mongols began to arrive from the East, they brought paintings with them from China. These paintings highly influenced the Persia artists who enjoyed using the dragons, clothing styles and landscapes that they saw in the Chinese art.




The Persians did move on to techniques of layering the paint which developed a three dimensional affect that hadn’t been seen before.

By this time the main use of the miniaturist paintings was for illustrations in books. The paintings not only made the book more enjoyable but sometimes easier to understand.




One of the great miniaturist painters, Ferdowsi, who lived in the 10th century wrote a lengthy illustrated history book of Persia for the king. Instead of prose he used poetry. The book contains 55 illustrations and is the longest epic poem ever written by one person. And, it only took 33 years for him to tell the story from creation to when the Arabs conquest happened in the 7th century. Regretfully the king was not as impressed as later scholars and artists have been.




Today, not only are books illustrated, but many paintings are done on camel bone. These paintings lean heavily to landscapes but also include portraits, whimsical portrayals and calligraphy.




We had the pleasure to visit a miniaturist’s home/studio where he demonstrated his use of a cat hair brush to quickly do a small portrait. Later we went to his store and spent nearly an hour just enjoying his works. Did we buy one? Of course……..

Remember that you can click the picture to enlarge it.

* The illustrations were all taken at the miniaturist's home that we visited and only tie into the last two paragraphs.