Review

"This stimulating and original study draws on both the antecedents and the legacies of Behzad's art from the 14th to the 16th century in Iran and Transoxiana and will prompt a fresh look at our appreciation of Persian miniature painting. The study places the Bustan manuscript in a sort of shifting continuum of tradition, response and innovation that both exalted and obscured the individuality of the artist". -- Charles Melville, Pembroke College, Cambridge

"An impressive and compelling work of scholarship that promotes a radical reorientation for the study of illustrated Persian manuscripts. At the same time it offers a detailed investigation, through original perspectives, of the paintings in a celebrated, and hitherto inadequately studied volume produced at the court of the last Timurid ruler Sultan Husayn Bayqara in Herat... This book will be of enormous interest to art historians and Islamic studies scholars in general and specialists in Persian painting in particular, who will appreciate the author's sophisticated approach and multi-faceted readings of the Bustan paintings - so long-admired and yet so cursorily-studied". -- Marianna Shreve Simpson, Visiting Scholar, University of Pennsylvania

About the Author

Lamia Balafrej is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles.