Persian Miniatures in the Bernard Berenson Collection

Bernard Berenson (1865-1959), the well-known art historian and author of classic texts on Renaissance art including Paintings of the Florentine Renaissance, also had an early interest in Asian and Islamic art.

Berenson owned a small but excellent selection of Persian miniature illustrations. Large numbers of Persian manuscripts were coming onto the art market in the early 1900s, particularly through Paris dealers, which is where Berenson acquired most of his collection between 1910-1913. The examples in his collection represent most of the principal schools of Persian painting from the 14^th to the 16^th centuries.

The rarest work in the Berenson collection is the Anthology of Prince Baysunghur (1397-1434), a grandson of Tamerlane. It is believed to be the oldest illustrated manuscript commissioned by Baysunghur, one of the most important royal art patrons of the Islamic world. Berenson also acquired a very early Timurid painting taken from the Zafarnama, a manuscript of the history of Tamerlane by Sharaf al-din Yazdi ( ? - 1454). The Freer Gallery of Art owns another painting from this same manuscript, Timur’s Entry into Samarqand. This is the oldest surviving copy of the Zafarnama, dated to July 1436.

Persian Miniatures in the Bernard Berenson Collection was published just two years after Berenson’s death by the Islamic art historian and chief curator of the Freer Gallery of Art, Richard Ettinghausen (1906-1979). It is the only publication on the Persian miniatures in Berenson’s rarely exhibited collection.