Studying the Evolution of Painted Enamel Medallions with the Images of Kings and Princes during the Qajar Period (Fath Ali Shah until the End of Naser al-Din Shah's Era)

The art of court iconography is one of the main arts of the Qajar era and can be seen in various arts of this era. One of the arts related to iconography, the combination of painting and jewelry, is painted in the form of enameled medallions which are symbolic and have decorative features and are usually given to foreign representatives. The purpose of this research is to study the painted medallions of the Qajar period and to examine the examples from the period of Fath Ali Shah to the end of the Nasrid period; which have been presented in various auctions around the world. The main question of this research is: What are the structural and content-related characteristics of the painted medallions of the Qajar period in each Qajar period? The research method in the present study is descriptive-analytical and has been done using library resources. The investigations of this research show that the integration of art and politics in the medallions of the Qajar period can be seen through the use of symbols of power in the images, and the more we move from the period of Fath Ali Shah to the period of Naser al-Din Shah, the number of consumed jewelry decreases. The abundant use of images in all eras can be seen as an attempt to initiate the monarchy. Most of the medallions were made to be given to foreign ambassadors, and the beautiful art of painting on enamel and combining it with jewels was formed and attached to clothes. Some of these medallions have paintings on the back of the work, and some of them are simple and monochromatic on the back. The production is more in the first Qajar period, then the Naserid period, and it is the lowest in the Muhammad Shah period. During the period of Fath Ali Shah, jewelry was used the most in medallions compared to all periods. King’s portraiture develops from idealism to realism along the path of portrait painting of this era. The necessity and importance of research in this case is that the study of painted medallions of the Qajar period has not been conducted and investigated as an independent research. These medallions were created for the first time in the court of Fath Ali Shah, and they were prepared by the painters of the Qajar court by imitating foreign examples and influencing the rules of court portrait painting. The jewelry and the gold frame should be coordinated. This process continues in the following periods according to the iconography in each period. The importance of examining these jewelry medallions shows that the medallions in question are one of the propaganda tools of the government in the Qajar period, and we witness the combination of art and politics and the taste of artists in the medallions, which is a combination of the art of painting and jewelry making in this era. The nature of the obtained information is qualitative, and the analyses are also qualitative, and the classification of medallions is related to the aesthetics of iconographic features of each era. The images of painted medallions of the Qajar period constitute the statistical population of this research, and the number of examples of the examined medallions is seven jeweled medallions of the period of Fath Ali Shah, two of the period of Muhammad Shah, and seven of the period of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar. The images of the medallions were obtained from Qajar art auction sites such as Bonham's, Sotheby's, Christie's, etc. The analysis and investigation of the rules of court iconography and the visible characteristics of painted medallions during the Qajar period are analyzed in this research. These works have been analyzed based on the basics of visual arts and the visual structure of the medallions. Consequently, it is clear that the image of the king's face has political and artistic importance and value in every period, and the evolution of the painting of the images shows that the image of the king is presented as a political value in gifts, and painting on enamel and decorating it with jewels were considered by the Qajar kings. The features of large-scale portrait painting can be seen in very small-scale medallions as well, and it shows the evolution of portrait painting from idealism to photorealism and naturalism; influenced by European painting and photography. The transformations of court portraiture and portraiture from idealism to realism can also be seen in medallions.