Recognizing the Drawing Concept in Persian Painting Based on Safavid Art Texts

The art of drawing in the field of Persian painting includes countless paintings, most of which are left over from the Safavid era. These drawings have been implemented in the form of preliminary drawings, copy drawings, or final drawings that represent mental or objective images. Thinking on these diverse aspects can point to the broadness of concepts related to the art of drawing. But, despite this breadth, a limited aspect of the concept of drawing has always been mentioned and generalized in Persian Painting Studies. However, in this context, it is possible to identify the diverse aspects of this art by referring to the artistic compositions of the Safavid era, such as artistic treatises and prefaces to the Muraqqa. This narrow view ignores the diverse aspects of drawing. Due to having specialized content, these sources can remind countless learned concepts about Iranian art. Attention to the mentioned texts provides knowledge of the art of drawing in terms of having diverse aspects, the richness of concepts and the expansion of the vocabulary. By analyzing the art texts of the Safavid era, researchers can discover the forgotten concepts and knowledge of Iranian art. These texts can reveal lost art forms, rediscover forgotten techniques. The importance of this research can be expressed in cases such as the distinction of drawing studies in the Iranian literature, the recognition as accurately as possible of the art of drawing, the discernment of its diverse forms, the distinguishing of other forms of this art and the reminder of specialized words related to the art and drawing through the return to the text of the arts of the Safavid era. In this regard, the present research aims to recognize the concept of drawing and its other diverse aspects, it benefits from a three-stage study process: 1-Understanding the meaning of the word drawing and searching for synonyms 2- Reviewing the content of text in artistic writings based on drawing-related concepts 3- Searching for examples related to these concepts. In the case of written sources, examples will be referred to those that were written in the Safavid era, and in the case of visual examples, drawings that are most related to the intended concept will be examined; also, the drawings that were implemented in the Safavid era. For this purpose, in the case of drawing, the intensity case sampling will be used. The above study’s route is accompanied by the following questions: 1. To what concepts of the art of drawing in connection with Iranian painting do the art texts of the Safavid era refer? 2. What kind of drawings do these concepts include? The research methodology involves a historical-comparative approach. This method is used to interpret the evidence with the focus on the contexts and is divided into 18 types based on three characteristics of time, unit of study and data type. The present study is a fourth type. The fourth type of this method is in terms of time dimension to the past, the type of data is qualitative and the unit of study is related to a single nation that is in this study, the context of Persian painting in the Safavid era (10-11th century AH), concepts related to drawing and Safavid court painters are considered respectively. Due to the written and visual nature of the sources, information collection is done in a library method through note-taking and image analysis in this process, internet databases have also be used to complete the information. The results state that the drawing’s foundation is based on the line element. This element that unites, leads to a variety of drawings. In other words, each of these drawings, according to the nature and quality of the line element, results in the formation of a variety of drawing art. These different types have benefited from the line element for a distinct purpose from each other. For this reason, they have a different name and term, each of which implies the concept of drawing and its fundamental characteristic. In these single-page drawings, the line element is of two types; non-independent and independent, and, according to this feature, represents mental or objective images. Therefore, the term "drawing" in Safavid art texts refers to the visual representation of forms using lines, often executed in a single color. This concept is closely linked to the terms "Tahrir", "Mosavvade" and "Qalam Siāhi". In Tahrir, often the line element runs without linear value and has subtle lines. In Mosavvade, the presentation of the pre-drawing is desired, and the lines are drawn in accordance with the selected sample. In Qalam Siāhi, the line element with a variety of thicknesses is used. Therefore, it includes various types of drawing, such as draft, practice, iteration, and final, which are associated with the features of pen elegance, visual balance of black and white, and executive skill.