Art: Persia on Parade

His Imperial Majesty Reza Khan Pahlavi listened to entreaty and, with a grand gesture, has given his official patronage to a Second International Exhibition of Persian Art* forthcoming at London’s Burlington House, Jan. 5 to March 1, 1931. He went further and did what no Persian monarch before him dreamed of doing: gave official sanction for the Exhibition’s experts to select loan exhibits from the Royal collection, Imperial Library, National Museum, the famed mosques of Kum, Ardebil and Mashad’s Imam Reiza.

Last week Arthur Upham Pope, director of the Exhibition, returned to London from Persia in high feather, announced results of his foray. Concurrently was released news of the nature, extent and magnitude of the greatest Persian art exhibition ever held.

Exhibits. Besides Persia, 19 countries will send specimens of Persian art toLondon. From Egypt will go treasures of Cairo Museum and the Khedivial library, from Russia famed silver, gold, bronze Sassanian† vessels. Museums and private collections in the U. S. (including Manhattan’s Metropolitan, Chicago’s Art Institute), and in France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Poland will contribute Persian pieces.

When the doors of Burlington House open there will be on view 100 carpets, more than 1,000 textiles, 1,500 paintings & drawings, hundreds of thefinest extant Persian book covers, more than 1,000 pieces of faïence, a priceless collection of illuminated manuscripts, bronzes from Achaemenian and Sassanian times, sculpture, architectural and ornamental detail, friezes, ceramics, enamel, glassware, brocades, velvets, tapestries, gold and silver work, a unique collection of Saljuk silverware, gold and silver inlay, lacquer work. Notable will be a group of remarkably preserved bronze Achaemenian objects of great sculptural beauty and vigor recently unearthed in Luristan Province by Dr. Friedrich Sarre, famed Berlin archeologist.

Dr. Sarre calls this “the most important find of my lifetime. . . . It gives me the key to European influence on Asiatic art.”

Emphasis will be placed on the evolution of Persian art the exhibits arranged to illustrate sources, influences, development, mutations since 3,000 B. C. Prizes will be offered for designs based on exhibit specimens most applicable to modern industrial art. The specimen exhibit will be augmented by 10,000 photographs of Persian architecture, art, and archeology not removable to London. Chief aim is to demonstrate on a great scale what has been known to only a small circle of specialists.

“Peacock Throne.” The only object of Persian art at all familiar to average occidentals is the famed throne upon which sit Persia’s Shahs. And this came from India, not Persia. Built in the reign of Shah Jahan (1627-58) in India’s “golden age of architecture,” it appeared in Persia after the sack of Delhi by Nadir Shah in 1738. Designer is thought to have been Ustad Isa, reputed creator of the Taj Mahal. Before it was stripped of most of its appurtenances, silver steps led up to the throne proper, a peacock tail canopy overspread it, diamonds, rubies, precious gems, thick as stars on an autumn night, encrusted it. Eastern imagination placed its original value at £12,000,000 sterling.

Carpets. Most famed Persian rug is “The Emperor’s Hunting Carpet,” woven in the 16th century reign of Tahmasp Shah who was to Persian art as was Louis XIV to French. A border string of clear gold cartouches separates the ruby field from the main border. Vines rise in colliding spirals of great blossoms, leaves, tendrils. Wild animals fight. Shah Abbas the Great presented it to Russia about 1600, Tsar Peter the Great to Habsburg Leopold in 1698.

Leopold hung it over the great staircase at Schönbrunn where it remained, pride of the Habsburgs, until 1922 when it went to the Austrian State Museum. In 1925 it was sold to London tycoons to defray a deficit. Of it in the U. S. alone there are 2,000 copies.

Scarcely less famed is the Ardebil carpet, now in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. A body of rich blue with delicate floral tracery surrounds a centre medallion of yellow. Sixteen minaret-shaped points lead to 16 red, gold, and green cartouches. Sacred mosque lamps hang from two of them.

U. S. Collections. Noteworthy are the Persian treasures of these U. S. collectors: John Davison Rockefeller Jr. (rugs), the Metropolitan Museum’s Havemeyer collection (most extensive and varied—glassware, pottery, earthenware bowls), Horace Havemeyer (rugs, pottery), Mortimer Schiff (pottery, including a famed Rhages bowl) and lesser collections owned by Charles B. Hoyt, George Pratt, Walter P. Chrysler, Mrs. William H. Moore, Mrs. Rainey Rogers.

*First International Persian exhibit was held in 1926 at Pennsylvania Museum of Art in Philadelphia in conjunction with theU. S. sesquicentennial. †In A. D. 224-651 Persia was called Sassania.