SAFAVID POTTERY TILE MOSAIC
Of irregular oblong form, comprising polychrome elements in the form of a lobed cartouche containing a yellow peacock amidst a floral spray on a black ground, the cartouche surrounded by further floral sprays on a cobalt-blue ground, with black and white border to the vertical edges.
84.8 by 38 cm.
The use of the peacock as a decorative element has a long history in Islamic art: the early Persian poets Rudaki and Attar associated it with the sun, which later developed into an association with royalty (Three Capitals of Islamic Art, p.247). An early Safavid example of the iconography found in the present lot can be found in the tilework of the Friday Mosque in Kirman which was redesigned and decorated in AH 957/1550 AD (Porter, Y. and Degorge, G., L’Art de la céramique dans l’architecture musulmane, Paris, 2001, p.102).
A similar mosaic tile panel with confronted peacocks can be found in the collection of the Louvre, Paris (inv.no.MAO 1189; see Istanbul, Isfahan, Delhi: Three Capitals of Islamic Art, exhibition catalogue, Istanbul 2008, no.118, p. 247); and another notable example can be found in the tilework of the Shah Mosque in Isfahan, dating to 1627.
Provenance: Private UK Collection, acquired in Iran in the late 1960s.
