Artists, Paintings and their Publics

Safavid Albums in the Seventeenth Century by Dr Massumeh Farhad

Khalili Lecture Theatre, Philips Building, SOAS, University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H OXG

The Persian Heritage Foundation (New York) and SOAS are pleased to invite you to four lectures in the Yarshater Lectures in Persian Art series. Dr Massumeh Farhad, Chief Curator and the Ebrahimi Family Curator of Persian, Arab and Turkish Art at the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institute, will be giving four lectures on the topic of ‘Artists, Paintings and their Publics: Safavid Albums in the Seventeenth Century’.

Thursday, 16th May: ‘Isfahan: the City as a Setting for Safavid Painting’

Friday, 17th May: ‘“United in War and Peace”: A Closer Look at Safavid Albums’

Monday, 20th May: ‘Painting and Production: A New Model for Safavid Isfahan’

Tuesday, 21st May: ‘Safavid Albums: Shifting the Visual Language’

The first lecture will discuss the Safavid capital Isfahan as the social, cultural and architectural setting for the arts of the book in seventeenth-century Iran. The structure, format and content of later Safavid albums (muraqqa’), the circulation of images, as well as Ottoman and Mughal responses will be the subject of the second lecture. In the third talk, the careers of three artists (Malik Husayn, Muhammad Qasim and Mu’in Musavvir) will serve as a lens on the production of manuscripts and album paintings and their different publics in later Safavid Iran. The final lecture will approach album pages from a stylistic perspective to highlight their meaning and function within the larger historical and artistic context of the period.