The Art of Islamic Book--Research Paper - Essay Example

In his analysis on Bihzad’s art, he has elaborated on several approaches in solving the authenticity issue in the process. Where an artist might be understood to subsist in the painting, examining whether or not the concept of authorship established post-Renaissance European painting – derived from Vasari’s concept of mamera (hand), and still very much present in the methods used to study Persianate paintings – does indeed obtain to the Persianate painting tradition. Moreover, by exposing the tensions that exist between modern and pre-modern conceptions of authorship, is it possible to come closer to a mid-sixteenth century notion of the painter’s agency? (121) We underscore the importance to identify Bihzad and his contribution to Persianate artistic history.

This will enlighten us on the structure of Roxburgh’s arguments as well as his analyses. As it is, there is a fair number of literature written about him and his work. Roxburgh, himself, talked about this stressing that “contemporary and later writers are unanimous in their praise of Bihzad, the Mughal ruler Babor’s slight and curiously specific criticism being by far the exception rather than the rule. Bihzad, in Armenian Sakisian’s words, “a rhetorical figure of comparison… Because Bihzad has garnered copious encomia, his contribution to the Persianate art tradition recognized again and again, the artist’s life and work seem tantalizingly within reach, unlike so many artists who were only given passing notice.

” (Roxburgh, 119) Bihzad is important in the history of Persianate art because scholars place him to be at par with the European masters. As Roxburgh commented, “comparisons between Bihzad and European artists were positively de rigueur. Some scholars who wrote extensively about Bihzad in relation to the European masters such as Memling, Holbein and Raphael include F.R. Martin, Ali Ahmad Naimi, among