Partly colored drawing. ‘Mounted Falconer Hunting Ducks’
Iran; c. 1420
Drawing: 11.4 × 20.5 cm
Early Timurid painting was in many ways a further development of the refined art that was created under the Jalayirids and the Muzaffarids. An elegant and painstakingly detailed work is this depiction of a mounted falconer about to send his falcon aloft through a flock of flapping ducks.
We do not know whether the drawing was a draft for a larger composition or an independent study. It is, however, a fact that in the 15th century, people began to collect exquisite drawings and calligraphy in an album (muraqqa). This can be considered the first signs of a development in which Islamic painting liberated itself from being only an illustration to a text.
Inv. no. 20/2006
Published in:
Edgard Blochet: Catalogue of an exhibition of Persian paintings from the XIIth to the XVIIIth cent. formerly from the collections of the Shahs of Persia and of the great Moguls, held at the Galleries of Demotte Inc., New York 1930, p. 37 and 39, cat.no. 105;
Kjeld von Folsach: For the Privileged Few: Islamic Miniature Painting from The David Collection, Louisiana, Humlebæk 2007, cat.no. 14
Ricardo Olmos: “Una clasificación árabe medieval de las aves de presa” in Anuario AECCA, 2013, p. 112-113;
Jangar Ilyasov: “Birds of prey and falconry imagery in ancient and medieval Central Asian art” in Oliver Grimm, with Karl-Heiz Gersmann and Anne-Lise Tropato (eds.): Raptor on the fist: falconry, its imagery and similar motifs throughout the millenia on a global scale, Kiel 2020, fig. 24, p. 969;
Kjeld von Folsach, Joachim Meyer and Peter Wandel: Fighting, Hunting, Impressing. Arms and Armour from the Islamic World 1500-1850, The David Collection, Copenhagen 2021, cat.no. 76;
