Dragon and Clouds

Dragon and Clouds

In this drawing, a dragon strides across a landscape and twists its head toward the cloud-swept sky. A leafy tree with lightly tinted rectangular leaves rises to the right behind the dragon. In addition to the dramatic diagonal streak of the clouds, the fiery wings, purposeful advance, and torque of the neck all accentuate the movement of both nature and beast.

During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, in keeping with the increased production of single-page, finished drawings for inclusion in albums, numerous pictures were executed of dragons, either alone or in combat with men and other animals. The style of draftsmanship, marked by lines of variable thickness, was developed in Iran in the 1590s by Riza-yi ‘Abbasi, the young prodigy of the Safavid court kitabkhana, or library cum artists’ workshop, and Sadiqi Beg, his older contemporary and head of the royal library. Particularly well suited to the depiction of slithering reptilian forms, this calligraphic use of the pen diverged from the earlier style of drawing, in which all contours were enclosed by a sharp, deliberate line. The line in this image relies on the artist’s varying the pressure on his reed pen, in the same way a calligrapher writing nasta‘liq script would do when elongating letters.

While this type of draftsmanship may have developed as an outgrowth of elegant calligraphy, Ottoman Turkish drawings from the 1560s also include the use of strong black lines running along the backs of dragons.[1] By whatever means of transmission, the idea took hold at the Safavid court. Whereas Riza drew mostly human figures and domesticated animals, Sadiqi Beg produced many drawings and sketches of dragons. In one showing a horseman confronting a dragon,[2] the beast’s neck and belly have been rendered in exactly the same fashion as they appear here, with short, rounded strokes of the pen forming the outline and striated lines suggesting the ridged skin. Given these similarities, the drawing can safely be attributed to Sadiqi Beg working about 1600.

Sheila R. Canby in [Ekhtiar, Soucek, Canby, and Haidar 2011]

Footnotes:

1. Welch 2004, pp. 50–51.

2. Canby 1998, p. 68.

Sevadjian Collection, Paris (until 1961; its sale, Hôtel Drouot,Paris, 31 October, 1961, no 1; to Manoukian); Manoukian Collection, Paris(1961–ca. 1995); Private collection, by descent, Paris (ca. 1995–2010); [ Oliver Forge and Brendan Lynch Ltd., London, 2010; sold to MMA]

", 31 October, 1961." In Collection Sevadjian, 3eme vente. Paris: Hôtel Drouot, 1961. no. 1.

Welch, Stuart Cary. "Persian, Turkish and indian Drawings from the Stuart Cary Welch Collection." In From MInd, Heart, and Hand. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. pp. 50–51.

Ekhtiar, Maryam, Priscilla P. Soucek, Sheila R. Canby, and Navina Haidar, ed. Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1st ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011. no. 151, p. 224, ill. (color).