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2025 Yarshater Lectures in Persian Art
Key information
- Date
- to
- Venue
- SOAS, Russell Square
- Room
- Khalili Lecture Theatre
- Event type
- Lecture
About this event
The Yarshater Lectures in Persian Art at SOAS are a series of academic lectures dedicated to Iranian art and culture and are intended for publication.
The lectures and publications carry the name of Professor Ehsan Yarshater (who completed his doctorate at SOAS in 1960) in recognition of his scholarly achievements.
The Yarshater Lectures in Persian Art at SOAS are sponsored by the Persian Heritage Foundation.
About the lectures
Manuscript Matters and the Persian Arts of the Book in Early Modern Times - Marianna Shreve Simpson
This four-part series looks at both familiar and overlooked aspects of deluxe Persian manuscript production during the early modern period, roughly the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries.
Individual lecture topics include paintings as frontispieces and finispieces, the presence of page markers, manuscript illuminators and their graphic styles, and the image of the book in illustrated manuscripts. The overall aim is to explore some of the material and artistic features, forms and functions that shaped the making of Persian manuscripts in the past and that contribute to the continuing appeal of this celebrated tradition in the present.
Lectures
| Date | Lecture |
|---|---|
| 16 Jan | Persian Paintings as Prelude and Postscript |
| 17 Jan | Manuscript Minutiae: Page Markers and Why They Matter |
| 20 Jan | Masters of the Minute: Illuminators, Signatures and Styles |
| 21 Jan | Picturing the Persianate Book |
About the speaker
Marianna Shreve Simpson holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University and has published, taught, and lectured widely on medieval and early modern Islamic art in general and the arts of the book in particular.
Her publications include Princeton’s Great Book of Kings: The Peck Shahnama (2015), Persian Poetry, Painting, and Patronage: Illustrations in a Sixteenth-Century Masterpiece (1998), and Sultan Ibrahim Mirza’s “Haft Awrang”: A Princely Manuscript from Sixteenth-Century Iran (1997).
Her professional career has included positions at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington. D.C.; the Smithsonian Institution’s Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery; and the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Over the years she has taught at various American universities and institutions, most recently at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School. She is affiliated with the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, University of Pennsylvania.
Dates and details
The 2025 Yarshater Lectures in Persian Art will take place over four days in January. Each lecture will take place from 7:00pm in the Khalili Lecture Theatre at SOAS's Russell Square Campus (main building, lower ground floor).
Admission is free and all are welcome.
Please register to attend.
About the image
This double-page composition, depicting a garden reception scene, opens a sixteenth-century volume of Persian poetry and is a splendid example of frontispiece painting. It is signed and dated (A.H. 989/1581) by the court artist 'Abdullah al-Muzahhib, who illustrated and illuminated other deluxe manuscripts of the period.
Abdullah Muzahhib / National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, The Art and History Collection, LTS1995.2.63.1-2 (detail)
