Crimson & Sky Blue & Indigo

Crimson is the royal robe — the deep vivid crimson of the Timurid royal silk brocade kaftan depicted in the most celebrated Herat school Persian miniature paintings. Persian silk and the Timurid court: the Timurid dynasty (تیموریان — the dynasty descended from Timur — Tamerlane — 1336-1405 — the most feared and most militarily formidable conqueror of the 14th century — who built an empire extending from Anatolia to northern India) was one of the most enthusiastic and most discerning patrons of Persian art in the entire history of Islamic culture. The Herat school: established under Timurid patronage in Herat (هرات — the most culturally important city of the Timurid empire — now in western Afghanistan) — the most celebrated Persian miniature painting school of the 15th century. Key figure: Kamal ud-Din Bihzad (کمال‌الدین بهزاد — approximately 1450-1535 — the most celebrated Persian miniature painter — sometimes called the 'Raphael of the East' — whose paintings are the most technically refined and most compositionally sophisticated of all Persian miniature works — characterized by the most precise observation of human figures and expressions, the most carefully organized architectural backgrounds, and the most perfectly harmonious color palette). The crimson robe: in the most elaborately illustrated Persian manuscripts (particularly the Shahnameh — the Book of Kings — the monumental 10th-century CE Persian epic poem by Firdausi — the most frequently illustrated text in the entire history of Persian manuscript painting — depicting the legendary and historical kings of Iran from the mythological creation through the Arab conquest of 651 CE), the most important royal and heroic figures are depicted wearing the most richly colored silk brocade robes — the deep vivid crimson robe is reserved for the most powerful and most heroic figures — kings, heroes, and divine messengers. Sky Blue is the Persian sky — the pale clear sky blue of the most characteristic Persian miniature sky painting. The Herat school sky: one of the most immediately distinctive features of Herat school Persian miniature painting (distinguishing it from the slightly earlier Shiraz school and from the later Safavid Tabriz school) is the characteristic sky color — a pale, slightly warm, luminously clear sky blue (significantly lighter and more atmospheric than the deep cobalt or ultramarine of some earlier Persian miniature traditions) that creates the most delicately atmospheric and most spatially convincing sky passages in any Islamic book painting. The miniature painting sky tradition: unlike the flat, non-atmospheric gold-leaf sky used in Byzantine mosaics and many medieval Islamic paintings (where the gold represents heavenly or divine light rather than naturalistic sky), the Herat school painters developed a sophisticated understanding of atmospheric perspective — the sky lightens toward the horizon and deepens in saturation toward the zenith — creating the most convincingly three-dimensional and most naturalistically atmospheric sky in Islamic painting. Indigo is the lapis lazuli — the very deep blue-violet of the most perfectly purified ultramarine (ultramarinum — Latin: 'from beyond the sea' — the specific name given to the blue pigment purified from lapis lazuli — the 'beyond the sea' referring to the eastern Mediterranean origin of the most carefully traded lapis lazuli arriving in European and Islamic markets). The Sar-e-Sang mines: the lapis lazuli mines of Sar-e-Sang (from Dari: سر سنگ — 'head of the rock' — a remote valley in the Kokcha River canyon in Badakhshan province of northeastern Afghanistan — at an altitude of approximately 2,400-3,400 meters — the most ancient continuously operated mine in the world, exploited for at least 7,000 years — producing the highest-quality lapis lazuli in the world). The Persian miniature's lapis: in the most celebrated Persian miniature paintings (particularly the most elaborate Timurid-era manuscripts from Herat — including the Baysunghur Shahnameh of 1430 — the most lavishly illustrated Shahnameh manuscript of the entire Timurid period — 22 large-format miniature paintings by the most accomplished Herat court painters), the lapis lazuli pigment is used for the most formally prestigious color areas — the deepest horizon bands, the most richly shadowed architectural surfaces, and the most elaborately patterned textiles of the most important figures.