Unknown maker
Preface (verso) from a double-page frontispiece of a Shahnama of Firdausi (940-1019 or 1025)c. 1444
This text page is the first page of a Shahnama manuscript with an illuminated heading containing the basmala ("In the name of Allah, etc.") followed by the text of the preface to the Shahnama . More about this work
About this work
This text page is the first page of a Shahnama manuscript with an illuminated heading containing the basmala ("In the name of Allah, etc.") followed by the text of the preface to the Shahnama .
Text from the Cleveland Museum of Art.
How it was made
- Opaque watercolour
- Watercolour made opaque with white or chalk and laid in flat, even layers. Persian and Indian painters ground their colours from minerals, applied them with the finest brushes and burnished the finished page.
- Watercolour
- Pigment in gum arabic, thinned with water and laid in transparent washes. Nothing white is painted: the light is the paper showing through.
- Ink on paper
- Ink made from soot and animal glue, ground with water on an inkstone. A single brush can give a hair-fine line or a broad wash, and nothing can be corrected.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Cleveland Museum of Art has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 1956.10.b
- Credit
- Courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art
- Type
- Manuscript
- Department
- Islamic Art
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
