THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF PORTRAITURE IN THE PERSIAN TRADITION

Abstract

Any attempt to survey the development and significance of portraiture in the Persian pictorial tradition requires the synthesis of scattered and often contradictory materials. Earlier efforts to analyze the role of portraits in the visual culture of the Islamic world have confronted seemingly insoluble problems. Textual and pictorial evidence attests that at certain times portraiture flourished, particularly in Iran, Central Asia, and India. On the other hand, religious scruples evidenced in Koranic commentaries that circulated among both Sunni and Shi'a scholars, concerning the impropriety of a person seeking to usurp the creative role of God by producing images of animate beings appear to preclude the production of individualized portraits. Attempts to amalgamate this conflicting evidence into a coherent whole have been hampered by the absence of any theoretical model for evaluating the relative significance of its constituent elements. Little attention has been paid either to reconstructing the functions served by portraiture or even to defining what constitutes a portrait within the Persian cultural sphere. The aim of this essay is to create a historical and conceptual framework for analyzing the role of portraiture in the pictorial tradition of pre-modern Iran and related regions and thereby lay the foundations for a more satisfactory resolution of these complicated questions. Investigations into the role of images in various regions of the Islamic world have reached different and sometimes intrinsically contradictory conclusions. Some studies refer tangentially to the question of portraits in the course of a broader consideration of at-