Comparative investigation of Two Paintings of the Women in the Safavid and Mughal Eras

This paper is a comparative study of two paintings depicting the women in the Safavid and Mughal eras during the reign of Shah Abbas and Shah Jahan, which are contemporaneous in Shah Abbas and Shah Jahan era in the ۱۶th century. During the reign of these two kings, there occurred a great transformation in arts especially in the painting of human figures during which the painters gradually took distance from the elaborate methods of the past and adopted realistic and simpler designs. Shah Jahan era is considered as an important foundation for Indian miniature in which like that of Shah Abas, the artists practiced face painting. The art of miniature in India includes the Persian miniature and the local miniature (Hindu) and also has been influenced by western paintings. Also in Persia, due to the widespread relations with Europe, the arts especially miniature underwent a great transformation so that a school with the name of Esfahani was formed during Shah Abbas era which was represented by Reza Abasi and his In this paper, while introducing the two Persian and Indian kings and explaining on the painting features in these two schools, the author selects two paintings of women as a comparative review in an effort to compare their pictorial characteristics in terms of quality and depiction of clothes and garments. It is worth mentioning that contrary to Shah Jahan, there was hardly any portrait of Shah Abbas. Thus only the two paintings suitable for this comparison were selected and subsequently analyzed.

کلیدواژه ها:

Miniature ، Safavid Era ، Mughal Era ، Women ، Figure ، Garment