Islamic Art

Chester Beatty: Meeting in Isfahan

The recent exhibition highlighted the cosmopolitan nature of Safavid Isfahan, and the importance of digital archiving

Detail from: Garden (Būstān), by Sa`di, Qazvin, 16th century, Ink, pigment and gold on paper, 300 mm x 201 mm x 34 mm, Chester Beatty: Per 236 | Image courtesy of Chester Beatty

Isfahan, the city dubbed “half the world”, was the cosmopolitan hub of Safavid Persia. Named the capital of the Safavid empire in 1598, Isfahan became a centre of political, spiritual and cultural life in the region. European travellers wrote with wonder about the dazzling urban hub which lay at the centre of the global silk trade. The Chester Beatty exhibition, which ran from 4 February to 28 August 2022, pulled together 65 works from the museum’s Persian, Turkish, Arabic and Armenian collections, early printed books and maps from Europe, as well as works loaned by the National Museum of Ireland, to show the magnificence of this city.

Running alongside the exhibition from 27–28 May 2022 was Seeing Isfahan: Perspectives on the Safavid Image, an academic conference which brought specialists from around the world together to examine an illuminating cross-section of visual and intellectual culture in Isfahan. Twelve speakers presented new research on how Safavid identity was visualised in the early modern period, with Massumeh Farhad from the National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, D.C., delivering the keynote lecture on…