How east met west in Safavid dynasty Persia

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Trade, art and culture bound Persia to Europe in unexpected ways, as Alexander Adams explores

The Fascination of Persia: The Persian-European Dialogue in Seventeenth-Century Art edited by Axel Langer

The Fascination of Persia is a catalogue for a recent exhibition held at Museum Rietberg, Zurich which examined various elements of cultural exchange between Europe and Persia during the Safavid dynasty in Persia (1501–1736). During this period, the rulers of Christendom saw Persia as a vital counterbalance to the threat of Ottoman domination and therefore cultivated cultural, trade and military ties between Europe and Persia. The trade was mainly silk and textiles from Persia in return for advanced technology (included lenses and clocks), raw materials, spices (from Dutch East Indies trading posts and colonies) and sugar. Cultural exchange seems to have been relatively limited.

This catalogue examines the links in areas including textile design, costume, cartography and fine art. It proves a largely successful and fascinating examination that should be of value to academics and students of cultural studies. Experts focus on separate topics, rarely overlapping. Even for those knowledgeable about Persian art there will be surprises.

The initially puzzling presence of 17th-century textiles in Polish museums is explained by Paulina Banas. The Polish-Lithuanian nobility considered themselves direct descendants of Sarmatian warlords (who originated from the Persian region) and therefore Persian fabrics and some costumes were acquired by the upper classes as a form of hereditary affiliation. It seems that Polish buyers preferred muted colours to the usually strongly contrasting colours normal in Persian textile design. It may be that Persian weavers adapted their wares to suit these Polish buyers. There is the question of how Polish heraldic motifs came to be incorporated in exported Persian textiles. Persian-style carpets became so associated with Poland that in France the objects were described as ‘polonaise’.

Axel Langer’s discussion on the influence of European prints on Persian painters reveals how local artists imitated and adapted motifs from Western iconography. The Shia sect is exceptional among Muslim sects in that it permits the depiction of figures and animals, which is usually forbidden in Islamic societies. Persia has always had a strong tradition independent of Arab culture, a matter of pride among modern Iranians. Illustrated in this catalogue are Persian paintings of female nudes inspired by Dutch prints, which would be unimaginable in Arab art.

A curious hybrid of European and Persian art is a series of 21 full-length figure paintings of uncertain date and origin. The group are similarly sized oil paintings in Western technique but made by an artist or artists working in the Persian region. The pictures seem to be studies of types, characterized by their costumes and symbolic attributes, rather than illustrations of literary characters. The paintings, now dispersed worldwide, are not thought to be portraits of specific individuals. The 12 examples were brought together for this exhibition included Ghulam in Georgian Costume with Bow and Arrow and Woman in Armenian Costume.

As is so often the case, documentary evidence about these images is lacking. The few European visitors who reached Persia were more interested in comparing ancient ruins against Pliny’s and Xenophon’s accounts than in recording the customs and daily life of contemporary Persians. As a result a good many points of interest regarding the Safavid dynasty are matters of speculation to this day.

A chapter on the cartography of Persia by European mapmakers examines the acquisition of topographical knowledge about this legendary but rarely visited land. The author points out that many cartographers did not indicate the exact boundaries of the Persian Empire because they fluctuated so often that it meant there was effectively insufficient information on the matter. Other topics include a summarization of diplomatic missions undertaken by Europeans and Persians (as dramatic as an historical romance) and an analysis of Persian objects present in Dutch paintings as signifiers of the exotic Orient.

A final section documents work by a handful of contemporary Iranian artists. The curator introduces it:

The works of Parastou Forouhar, Rozita Sharafjahan, Nazgol Ansarinia, Farhad Fozouni, Samira Eskandarfar, Hemid Sahihi and Mandana Moghaddam frequently generate social commentaries resulting from these artists’ experiences of living in Iran. What is remarkable is that they make use of history as a theme and a methodology. They force us to think long-term, both past and future. By describing connections between epochs, cultures, and aesthetics while using different techniques and ways of remembering and forgetting, they develop theories on a philosophical scale and thus risk taking a new, exciting and speculative glance at historiography.

These banalities and generalizations give us no useful – or even objective – information about the artists. It is no more than a gallery press release. The author’s texts do not give even basic biographical information about the artists. No artistic or social context within which to place them is provided. Brief texts and illustrations about single works by artists are wholly insufficient. This effort tells us little about the artists in question and next to nothing about Iranian art today, and provides us with no overview of how modern Iranian art influenced these artists. This afterthought does a disservice to artists and readers. An overview of modern and/or contemporary Iranian art would be most welcome but this effort falls far short of adequate.

Apart from this disappointing concluding section,The Fascination of Persia contains a collection of absorbing studies.

The Fascination of Persia: The Persian-European Dialogue in Seventeenth-Century Art,  edited by Axel Langer, is published by  Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess, 2013. 320pp., fully illustrated, €52.00 (pbk). ISBN 9 7835 8817 396