Lehre
Lehre
Simon Rettig
Wintersemester 2009/10
Seminar "Artistic Production and Transmission: Workshops and Artisans in the Persianate World (ca 1250 – 1500)"
What could possibly be the link between a 14th century Persian manuscript illumination and a mosaic tiled panel on an Indian Mausoleum? And between some metalwork jugs made in Afghanistan during the 15th century and a pavilion erected in Istanbul at the same time?
This seminar will focus on the art production of the late medieval Iranian world and the long debated issue among historians of Islamic art as to how exactly the atelier system (known in Persian as karkhane or ketabkhane) functioned. By using a few available sources, scholars imagined the workshop, and especially the courtly one, as a gathering of artists and craftsmen all working together in the same place. It seems now that this idealised vision of a unique atelier working for the glory of a prince is to some extent simplistic and partial. The disseminations of aesthetics and techniques, the artisans’ networks alongside with the evolution of patronage support the theory of the workshop as a more flexible institution. Permanency and changes encountered through time and space will be examined, from the Mongol Il-Khanate to the turn of the 15th-16th centuries, from Samarkand to Istanbul and from Tabriz to Delhi.
Einführende Literatur: T.W. Lentz and G.D. Lowry, Timur and the Princely vision, Los Angeles 1989 (esp. part III); S.S. Blair, “Patterns of Patronage and Production in Ilkhanid Iran. The case of Rashid al-Din”, in Oxford Studies in Islamic Art XII, Oxford 1996; L. Komaroff and S. Carboni, The Legacy of Gengis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256-1353, New York 2002 (parts 3, 7 and 8); E. Brac de La Perrière, L’art du livre dans l’Inde des sultanats, Paris 2008 (chapters 1 and 7).
Montags 12.00-14.00 Uhr, Koserstr. 20, Raum A 127