Figural Silk in Safavid Iran

Figural Silk in Safavid Iran Nazanin Hedayat Munroe Synopsis: Figural silk is the term used by art historians to identify textiles woven with images of human figures. Primarily produced in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Safavid Iran, the design process involved skilled textile specialists who worked in organized workshops and sometimes included signatures on their silk fabrics.…

The Depiction of European Women in Late Safavid Paintings

The Depiction of European Women in Late Safavid Paintings Negar Habibi Synopsis: This talk presents a group of 17th-century Persian paintings made in the farangi-sazi or Occidentalist style. It focuses in particular on depictions of females whose iconography is of European origins. Inspired by the print medium, some of these compositions recall Persian depictions of…

The Birth Scene of Iskandar (Alexander the Great)

The Birth Scene of Iskandar (Alexander the Great) Ayşin Yoltar-Yıldırım Synopsis: Museum collections often include works that are unidentified or inadequately studied. This presentation chases the source of an interesting birth scene depicted on a detached manuscript page, now held in the Brooklyn Museum, to an episode described in Nizami’s Iskandarnama (Book of Alexander). References: Milstein, Rachel.…

Coffee and Coffeehouses in Ottoman and Safavid Lands, 1500-1800

Coffee and Coffeehouses in Ottoman and Safavid Lands, 1500–1800 Farshid Emami Synopsis: A plant native to the highlands of Ethiopia, coffee was first consumed as a hot beverage in the Yemen during the fourteenth or fifteenth century. During the sixteenth century, the new drink spread beyond the Arabian Peninsula and coffeehouses proliferated in the eastern…

A Safavid Painting of the Prophet Muhammad’s Miʿraj

A Safavid Painting of the Prophet Muhammad’s Miʿraj Christiane Gruber Synopsis: This presentation explores a 16th-century Persian manuscript painting that depicts the Prophet Muhammad’s celestial ascension (mi’raj). It focuses in particular on the Prophet’s facial veil and his flaming aureole as well as their relationship to metaphorical expressions as found in Persian Sufi poetry. It…