Portrait of a Man by Reza Abbasi

Despite the absence of a signature, this portrait of a man pulling a shawl around his shoulders bears many of the stylistic hallmarks of the artist Riza working at the court of Shah ‘Abbas I around 1600. The rounded cheeks and slight double chin appear on many of Riza’s paintings of youths, but the shape of the figure’s small "bee-stung" lips is nearly identical to that of several other figures from the same period. The fineness of the artist’s brushstrokes on which his contemporaries remarked is evident in the soft fuzz of the figure’s fur hat and delicately painted eyebrows. Even the gold x’s on his robe are specific to this period of Riza’s career and presumably reflect a style of that moment. Such paintings were made for inclusion in albums and were particularly popular in the seventeenth century when portraiture became one of the favorite genres of Persian painting.

Portrait of a Man
Artist: Reza Abbasi
Object Name:Illustrated single work
Date:ca. 1600
Geography:Attributed to Iran
Medium:Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper
Dimensions:H. 8 3/8 in. (21.3 cm) W. 5 1/4 in. (13.3 cm)
Classification:Codices
Credit Line:Gift of Alexander Smith Cochran, 1913
Accession Number:13.228.36
from Met Museum New York

Reza Abbasi
1565 - 1635

Reza Abbasi was the leading Persian miniaturist of the Isfahan School during the later Safavid period, spending most of his career working for Shah Abbas I He is considered to be the last great master of the Persian miniature, best known for his single miniatures for muraqqa or albums, especially single figures of beautiful youths

Riza was possibly born in Kashan, as Āqā Riżā Kāshānī is one of the versions of his name; it has also been suggested that he was born in Mashad, where his father, the miniature artist Ali Asghar, is recorded as having worked in the atelier of the governor, Prince Ibrahim Mirza After Ibrahim's murder, Ali Asghar joined Shah Ismail II's workshop in the capital Qasvin Riza probably received his training from his father and joined the workshop of Shah Abbas I at a young age By this date, the number of royal commissions for illustrated books had diminished, and had been replaced by album miniatures in terms of employment given to the artists of the royal workshop

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Unlike most earlier Persian artists, he typically signed his work, often giving dates and other details as well, though there are many pieces with signatures that scholars now reject He may have worked on the ambitious, but incomplete Shahnameh, now in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin A much later copy of the work, from 1628, at the end of Abbas' reign and rendered in a very different style, may also be his It is now in the British Library His first dated drawing is from 1601, in the Topkapi Palace A book miniature of 1601-2 in the National Library of Russia has been attributed to him; the only other miniature in the book is probably by his father He is generally attributed with the 19 miniatures in a Khusraw and Shirin of 1631-32, although their quality has been criticised

His speciality, however, was the single miniature for the albums or muraqqas of private collectors, typically showing one or two figures with a lightly drawn garden background, sometimes in gold, in the style formerly used for border paintings, with individual plants dotted about on a plain background These vary between pure pen drawings and fully painted subjects with colour throughout, with several intermediate varieties The most typical have at least some colour in the figures, though not in the background; later works tend to have less colour His, or his buyers', favourite subjects were idealized figures of stylishly dressed and beautiful young men.
https://hisour.com/art-medium/watercolor/portrait-man-reza-abbasi/