Reza Abbasi's single-figure painting of a standing youth in a striped robe and red turban, holding a wine bottle and cup within a marbled album border. Artist

Riza-i Abbasi

Religious Art & Worldviews · Artists

The Safavid court painter who turned the Persian miniature toward the single figure — youths, lovers, and readers alone on the page.

Tagged: Painting Early Modern Decorative Iconic Safavid Painting Muslim Twelver Shia Islam

Reza Abbasi led Shah Abbas I's atelier at Isfahan and remade its art: where the Timurid page crowds, his pages breathe — one figure, a bottle, a book, a garden implied in a few ink lines washed with color.

The pictured Youth Holding a Bottle is his signature subject, the beautiful young cupbearer of Persian poetry, painted for albums rather than books: the miniature become a portrait.

References

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