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(Islamic & Indian Art, 29th October 2020) AN ILLUSTRATION FROM A SHAHINSHAHNAMA SERIES: AN AUDIENCE AT FATH 'ALI SHAH'S (r. 1797 - 1834) COURT Qajar Iran, first half 19th century AN ILLUSTRATION FROM A SHAHINSHAHNAMA SERIES: AN AUDIENCE AT FATH 'ALI SHAH'S (r. 1797 - 1834) COURT PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE AMERICAN COLLECTION Qajar Iran, first half 19th century Opaque pigments and ink heightened with gold on paper, the vertical composition depicting the Qajar king Fath 'Ali Shah (r. 1797 - 1834) during an audience at his court, seated on the Sun Throne in the middle of the room, fully bejewelled, showing off his exquisitely encrusted golden royal paraphernalia, in discussion with his two sons, wearing the princely crown and standing on the right, to the left of the throne two attendants wearing a tall black Astrakhan fur kaj-kolah hat, one holding an encrusted shield, the latter an encrusted club, two symbols often present in portraits of the Shah as emblems of his royal leadership, in front of the Shah a group of emissaries getting ready for the audience, wearing tall turbans and floral overcoats lined with fur, the scene re-sized and pasted onto later, thicker paper, the recto plain, the illustration 24cm x 16cm, the folio 34cm x 25.8cm. This scene shares several features of loose illustrated folios known to have been created for the Shahinshahnama (The Book of the King of Kings), an ambitious epic poem with over 40,000 couplets commissioned by Fath 'Ali Shah himself to his favourite court poet, Fath 'Ali Khan Saba, and produced between 1806 - 1810. The aim of such work was to legitimise the Qajar dynasty as the rightful rulers of Iran, and what better way to do so than creating a sequel to the great Book of Kings by Ferdowsi, the Shahnama. Several copies were produced in the 19th century. They were not only wisely distributed in the wider Iranian territory, but also presented as diplomatic gifts to foreign European ambassadors and kings, such as Sir Gore Ouseley in 1812 and the Emperor of Austria, Francis I (1804 -1835) in 1818 (Carol Guillaume, in L'Empire des Roses: Chefs-d'oeuvre de l'art persan du XIX siècle, Louvre-Lens, 2018, pp. 124 - 125). Two illustrated folios, respectively in the Museum of Islamic Art of Doha (MIA.2014.392) and the Louvre (MAO 798), depict an audience scene with an enthroned Fath 'Ali Shah, which shares the same compositional style of this lot. The illustration of our lot presents indeed the same characters of the two above-mentioned folios, but interestingly, the pairs of young princes and courtly attendants have been swapped around, like in a mirror image. Nevertheless, the direction of the Shah's gaze remains unaltered to the right of the composition, creating an unexpected variation to the theme and giving more prominence to his two sons. Our illustration also divides the six emissaries in two main groups, the standing and the seated, differently from the other folios, in which the emissaries gather all together, alternating standing and seated characters. The mixing certainly conveys more dynamism, suggesting the employment of a more experienced artist's hand. The composition in our lot is built instead around a strongly pyramidal model, with Fath 'Ali Shah at its top, leaving no doubt on who is the King of Kings. the illustration 24cm x 16cm, the folio 34cm x 25.8cm