The Analytical Study of the Influence of Kamal al-Din Bihzad's Works on Reza Abbasi's Paintings

Copying is one of the basic principles and important steps in the traditional teaching of Persian painting. In this imitation style, the artist has to be practicing and imitating the paintings of the previous masters, and can be allowed to manipulate or capture some elements in his own style after acquiring the necessary skills. This activity is the most common in all of the Persian painting schools and periods, and is described in the primeval treatises. Reza Abbasi, the prominent painter of the Safavid era and the founder of the Isfahan Painting School, has been copying the works of Kamal al-Din Bihzad, the prominent painter of the Timurid era, in a period of his artistic activities (1019 - 1029 AH / 1611 - 1621 AD). According to the latest researches, these works include four drawings with different themes. Of these four paintings, only three works included human figures, and the other one was specifically with the theme of the bird and flower. The total figures of these three paintings in the works of Kamal al-Din Bihzad and Reza Abbasi are 19 figures. Four human figures (traveler man, rural man, poet and Majnoun) were evaluated in order to investigate the formal diversity of the figures. These samples are selected by non-probability (selective) sampling method and the criterion of selection was the visibility of the whole body in the paintings. Although these paintings were signed by Reza Abbasi, that shows the originality of these works, unfortunately researchers have not paid attention to these works. Therefore, comparative study and analysis of these paintings with the works of Kamal al-Din Bihzad is very important in order to find out the influence that Reza Abbasi has taken from the previous well-known painter. Despite the other visual elements, figures have been drawn in a non-imitational way, and they were different from Reza Abbasi's figurative painting in comparison to Bihzad’s drawings. Therefore, the subject of this paper is the analytical study of the influence of Kamal al-Din Bihzad's works on Reza Abbasi's paintings, and the aim is to recognize the effects that Bihzad's paintings have had on Reza Abbasi's works. Also, the authors tried to answer this question: Which parts of Reza Abbasi's paintings have been influenced by Kamal al-Din Bihzad's works? This study was carried out through a descriptive - analytical method with a comparative approach. The information was collected through a documentary (library-based) method. The study focused on four sections: theme, form, position and the location of the figures in the composition. First, all figures were categorized based on their topic, then their proportions were measured based on the length of each head, and in the next step, the position and the way the figures had been arranged in the works were evaluated.
This study shows that Bihzad's influence on the thematic diversity of the figures in Reza Abbasi's works is limited to public figures. It is possible to assume that the sudden change in his behavior and temperament in the second period of his artistic life, in which non-courtly tendencies were at a very high level, laid the groundwork for Reza Abbasi's tendency to select and draw public figures from Bihzad's works. Bihzad's influence on Reza Abbasi's figures is relatively less in terms of the visual qualities, and Reza Abbasi has acted in his own way in cases such as the proportions of each limb and each part of the body, elongation and height. On the other hand, Reza Abbasi has been completely loyal to Bihzad's works in the representation of the movements of the figures, curvature and flexibility in the limbs as well as the location of the figures in the composition. In these examples, the figures are in three positions: standing, sitting and lying, and the shape and position of the bodies are depicted the same as Bihzad's works. Another Bihzad's influence on Reza Abbasi is the angle of the display of the upper and the lower parts of the body as it rotates from the waist up to one side. This curvature of the body in Reza Abbasi's drawing has led to variety and movement in the limbs of his figures. The location and arrangement of the figures in Reza Abbasi's works is almost the same as that of Bihzad. The placement of the figures in the most important points of composition shows the emphasis and importance of the human beings. The importance of the human figure in Reza Abbasi's works is such that in copying Bihzad's works, he reduced the frame of the work up to the figures, or removed secondary figures and limited visual space to the main figure.