Princes, Dervishes and Dragons: The Tile Arcade from Safavid Isfahan (c. 1685-95)

Toward the end of the nineteenth century much of Iran’s architectural heritage gave way to urban development. Among the casualties were the seventeenth-century Safavid palaces of Isfahan. Local dealers salvaged a series of astonishingly beautiful pictorial arch-shaped panels composed of cuerda seca tiles from one of these. Beginning in 1911 whole panels and many single tiles were sold through Hagop Kevorkian. The authors have assembled (digitally) 36 friezes once part of this set.

The iconog...