Incorrect Username, Email, or Password
This object does not yet have a description.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
2002.50.22
Title
Courtier with Attendants in a Garden, folio from an album
Classification
Albums
Work Type
album folio
Date
first half of the 16th century
Places
Creation Place: Central Asia, Uzbekistan, Bukhara
Period
Shaybanid period
Culture
Uzbek
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/149284

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Black ink, opaque watercolor, gold, and silver on paper, with underdrawing in red ink
Dimensions
33.2 x 21.1 cm (13 1/16 x 8 5/16 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Stanford and Norma Jean Calderwood, Belmont, MA (by 1974-2002), gift; to Harvard Art Museums, 2002.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, The Norma Jean Calderwood Collection of Islamic Art
Accession Year
2002
Object Number
2002.50.22
Division
Asian and Mediterranean Art
Contact
am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu
Permissions

The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.

Descriptions

Description
This painting depicts three youths in a garden. The aristocratic central figure, wearing an ornamented robe and holding a wine cup, leans against a blossoming tree. One of his attendants, kneeling on the left, offers him flowers and a golden tray, while the other carries his quiver of arrows. The languid and lyrical scene is rendered with delicate brushwork and sensitivity to detail evident in the figures’ communicative gestures and gazes and in the variety of naturalistic flowering plants. A long-necked ceramic vase on a golden stand bears traces of an inscription added at a later time and now illegible.
The setting of this painting, with its patterned wall, flowering tree, meandering stream, and blooming ground plants, is typical of garden scenes produced in Uzbek ateliers. The young men’s facial features and squat turbans further support a Shaybanid Central Asian attribution.
The painting is currently mounted as an album page. Examined under a microscope, its paper support is shown to be very thin and to have many creases and cracks, possibly because the folio on which the painting was executed was removed from its original context and split into two sheets. At the upper right is a reversed seal-impression, transferred from a facing album page.

Published Catalogue Text: In Harmony: The Norma Jean Calderwood Collection of Islamic Art , written 2013
127

Courtier with Attendants in a Garden
Folio from an album
Central Asia, Shaybanid period, first half 16th century
Black ink, opaque watercolor, gold, and silver on paper, with underdrawing in red ink
Folio: 33.2 × 21.1 cm (13 1/16 × 8 5/16 in.)
2002.50.22

This painting depicts three youths in a garden. The aristocratic central figure, wearing an ornamented robe and holding a wine cup, leans against a blossoming tree. One of his attendants, kneeling on the left, offers him flowers and a golden tray, while the other carries his quiver of arrows. The languid and lyrical scene is rendered with delicate brushwork and sensitivity to detail evident in the figures’ communicative gestures and gazes and in the variety of naturalistic flowering plants. A long-necked ceramic vase on a golden stand bears traces of an inscription added at a later time and now illegible.

The setting of this painting, with its patterned wall, flowering tree, meandering stream, and blooming ground plants, is typical of garden scenes produced in Uzbek ateliers. The young men’s facial features and squat turbans further support a Shaybanid Central Asian attribution.

The painting is currently mounted as an album page. Examined under a microscope, its paper support is shown to be very thin and to have many creases and cracks, possibly because the folio on which the painting was executed was removed from its original context and split into two sheets. At the upper right is a reversed seal-impression, transferred from a facing album page.

Mika M. Natif

Publication History

  • Mary McWilliams, ed., In Harmony: The Norma Jean Calderwood Collection of Islamic Art, exh. cat., Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2013), pp. 259-260, cat. 127, ill.

Exhibition History

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art at am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu