Studying the Miniatures of the Story of Zahak in Tahmasbi Shahnameh from the Point of View of Illustration

Iranian paintings in various periods have been mostly examined as single page illustrations and independent of the context. In this paper 13 successive paintings from the Tahmasbi Shahnameh, which are based on the story of Zahak, have been examined from the point of view of illustration. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the extent of the painters’ commitment to convey the fundamental idea of the context in the image, arrangement and succession of these works. This story has been painted by several painters. Their efforts to create harmonious and consistent images have been focused in this paper. The question is that how the painter’s commitment as an illustrator to express the text in image leads to the frames of the story being created harmoniously and consistently?
The results of this study indicate that the Shahnameh’s painters, with respect to their contemporary tradition and aesthetics, found out that though each painting may seem an independent work, is part of a chain of illustrations that represent a specific text. Despite collaboration of numerous artists, the use of common visual elements lead to the conformity of the paintings and visual consistence and continuity of 13 paintings as an illustrated whole narrative.
This research is based on library sources and uses descriptive- analytical method. The statistical population consists of 13 successive paintings from the Tahmasbi Shahnameh, which theme is the story of Zahak.