Muhammad Shafi`
( fl Isfahan, 1628-c. 1674). Persian painter. The son of RIZA, Muhammad Shafi` developed and popularized bird-and-flower painting, a genre his father had introduced to the Isfahan school. Youth Painting a Flower (c. 1635; Washington, DC, Freer, 53.17) is probably a self-portrait; mounted beside a sketch of an elderly bespectacled man identified as Riza, it corroborates the claim of Muhammad Shafi`'s kinship to Riza, also established by an inscribed drawing in Los Angeles (Co. Mus. A.). Muhammad Shafi` also completed at least one of his father's late drawings, The Poet, the Robber and the Dogs (Ham, Surrey, Keir priv. col., III.387). The quality of line in Muhammad Shafi`'s drawings is somewhat dry, but paintings such as Bird, Butterflies and Blossom (1651-2; Cleveland, OH, Mus. A.) exhibit a sensitive palette and subtly modelled forms, which were derived from European sources, including English engravings. The botanical studies of Muhammad Shafi` are exemplified by a group of flower drawings, many signed and dated between 1640 and 1671, included in an album (London, BM, 1988, 4-23 01-056); they are the forerunners of a versatile new decorative genre which was continued by such late 17th-century painters as MUHAMMAD ZAMAN and `ALIQULI JABBADAR and translated into intricate textile patterns. A velvet panel of pairs of standing females in a landscape of flowering plants (New York, Sotheby's, 11 Dec 1994, lot 87) bears Shafi` `Abbasi's signature, confirming his role as a textile designer.
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