TIMURID IRAN, FIRST HALF 15TH CENTURY

A similar study to that offered here was given to Harvard Art Museums by Stuart Cary Welch (1999.287). Although it differs from the present lot in that it features dragons at the terminus of arabesques, nonetheless the precision of the drawing and overall complexity of the design is closely comparable. Like ours, parts of that drawing had been pierced, suggesting that it was used as a working sketch for transferring a design by pouncing. Similar sketch drawings, also preparatory studies to be transferred onto other media, are found in the Diez Album in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Germany (f.73.S).

Perhaps most similar to the present lot is a study in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in which the arabesque also merges with waq-waq motifs (41.46). Swietochowski and Babaie plausibly suggest a connection between their drawing and a fragmentary marble slab excavated in Ghazna in 1957, and still located in a warehouse there (M0005; discussed in Swietochowski and Babaie, Persian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1989, no.1, pp.12-3). The presence of a light wash in that drawing, however, suggests that it is more of a finished work. Given the evidence of pouncing on ours, it is more likely that this sketch was intended as just that, thus providing a fascinating piece of evidence for artistic practices in Timurid Iran.