The arrow of time, like the arrow of the viewer's gaze, shoots through the fragments and drills the same holes in them, and we call these similar holes "connections".
The evolution of the Persian miniature was very slow. The faces of the men and women in the painting usually maintain a collagen-full youthful state, and their appearance is more full than that of the Persians, especially the rounded and plump chin with obvious Tang Yunyuan style. Although these figures are bumpy and convex, there is no chiaroscuro contrast, and the figures are ignored as if they never existed, which is similar to Chinese painting.
▲ [Iran] Reza Abbasi, "Kneeling into Wine and Eating", early 17th century
Isfahan School, ink and color on paper, 14 x 9.2 cm
Although Persian art close to the East always required the larger figures to be larger than the smaller ones, the distance of the position of the figures in the miniature paintings had almost zero effect on the size of the figures. The principle of near, large, far and small is completely invalid in the technique of miniature painting, and Muslim painters will express the distance and distance by placing distant figures or scenes on the top of the picture, which is inextricably linked to the three-distance principle of "high, far-reaching, and flat and far-reaching" in Chinese painting.
▲ [Iranian] Fidushi, "Smochi (Roc Bird) Brings Zar to Mount Elbruz," circa 1370
Tabriz Album Album
Topkapi Palace, Istanbul, Turkey
The image of the roc bird in the picture above looks very similar to China's multicolored phoenix at first glance, since there is a phoenix, there is naturally a dragon, and the image of the dragon in the miniature painting is not the style of the Chinese dragon?
▲ "The Dragon Slaying of Bahram V", illustration of Felddosi's Book of Kings, 1371
Contempt for focal perspective abounds in miniature paintings, and even the buildings that most need to use yin and yang to realize the three-dimensional sense have been reduced to flat hexagons. Hidden doors, open windows, tents in the corner, transparent pavilions, spread carpets or tapestries, cut the characters' activity space into relatively independent units one after another, constantly prompting the viewer the spacing and continuity between the plot plates, which is very close to the treatment of Chinese Tang Dynasty disguise, Ming and Qing embroidery novels, and Japanese comics.
Sheikh Mohammed Sabzewari, The Devil Approaches the Camp of The Riley Caravan, 1556-1565
Collection of the Freer Museum of Art, Washington, USA
The complex composition brings unexpected surprises, and the helpless truth is hidden under the strangeness. Collages, kaleidoscopes, montages, dream-like fragments, stutters... The essence of reality is precisely these messy things, which are understood as sequences, logic, and cause and effect, because the interpreter experiences all these fragments in the dimension of time: the arrow of time, like the arrow of the viewer's gaze, shoots through the fragments, drilling the same holes in them, and we call these similar holes "connections."
▲ Work of the Persian master miniature painter Mir Sayyid Ali, circa 1540
Collection of the British Museum, London, UK
The Influence of China on Persian Miniature Painting was indirectly introduced through Central Asia, and landscape paintings with too much Chinese aesthetic taste did not have as great an influence on miniature painting as the patterns of ceramics, silk fabrics and other decorative arts. For example, Ming and Qing blue and white porcelain often uses ornaments such as clouds, plants or mountain stones as partitions and transitions for picture units, and this treatment method is also common in miniature paintings.
▲ Mirza Ali, "The King Worships the Hermit Saint as a Teacher", 1556, an illustrated album in Garmi's famous book The Seven Thrones
▲ Illustration by Mirza Ali for The Seven Thrones
Like Chinese Kunqu opera, miniature carving, and wrong gold and silver, miniature paintings as aristocratic art have been dedicated to a small number of people since their birth. It requires both great patience on the part of the painter and enough leisure for the viewer to play with it. This innate quality of height and widowhood has made the fine painting rise and fall several times in history, and the nobility sometimes loves it and sometimes categorically prohibits it. Next time, we will talk about the history of the development of miniature painting.