60. Marginal Art-histories of Safavid Isfahan

This panel explores marginal art-historical narratives to re-examine normative understandings of the arts of Safavid (1501-1722) city of Isfahan. Challenging the art historical tradition of considering Isfahan as a place of ‘courtly’ productions as its main output, the panel draws attention to the acknowledgement that artistic scenes in the cosmopolitan Isfahan, were woven phenomena and shift the focus on the question of the agency of the marginal groups in fashioning multiple meanings of art/architecture in the city. Current scholarship concentrates primarily on the artistic-political representation of Isfahan as the Safavid empire capital. It focusses especially on major urban ensembles, such as Naqsh-i Jahān Maydan and Chahār-bāgh Avenue, and elite courtly manuscripts and single-page paintings by celebrated artists of the time. In contrast, this panel investigates minority and peripheral artistic agency. This agency is largely absent from art historical discourse yet actively present in Safavid Isfahan, as shown by surviving non-courtly manuscripts, objects, and buildings.

How were several minority groups such as Armenians and Jews perceived and received in the Isfahani artistic communities? What was the place of marginal groups like women in art – such as book arts? How were these groups approached and documented in the historical accounts of the time? Are manuscript paintings of 17th-century Isfahan mere representatives of the ‘visible’ part of the society? Are the dominant narratives of art and society devoid of traces of the artistic productions of the ‘invisible’ and vice versa? How did possibly a fusion – or seclusion – of the marginal arts take place and how can we use this new knowledge in rewriting art histories of Iran?

This panel invites fresh perspectives, addressing the methodological urgency and reforming the analytical lens for the study of Safavid art/architecture through the perspective of marginal art history. Such reforming may take place through revisiting the relationship between the artist’s beliefs, emotions, and the society and questioning the pre-assumed hierarchical systems and dichotomies of Safavid Isfahan and the way multiple fragments of it negotiated and functioned towards the artistic production.

Themes: Isfahan, early modern Iran, marginal art-histories

Additional format comment: This panel is intended to be in the format of papers followed by a panel discussion led by the chair and a potential respondent.

Lead Convenor: Mahroo Moosavi, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck Institute, Germany

To submit a Paper to this Session, please follow the guidance on our website and complete the AAH 2027 Call for Papers Proposal Submission Form.