or, for that matter, of any subject whatever--a false point
of departure. So long as it was supposed that Behzad was the first
mature master of Persian painting, Persian art-historians were as
inevitably out in their conjectures as were the people who used to
believe that Raphael was what they would have called "the _fons et
origo_" of European painting.

We are now acquainted, if not familiar, with Persian paintings of the
thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, with the Mongol and with a
pre-Mongol school--for it seems imprudent to give the name Mongol to
works that can be assigned to a date earlier than 1258 (the year of the
eponymous establishment), especially as they differ profoundly from the
recognized Mongol type. We know that the pre-Mongol school was the heir
of a great decorative tradition; and we have good reasons for believing
that this tradition was based on Sassanian, Sung, and Byzantine art. We
are therefore more or less in the position of people who should be
acquainted with the work of Cimabue, Giotto, and Duccio, though knowing
very little of Byzantine art and its primitive developments in the West.

Of this early period--Mongol and pre-Mongol--we do not yet possess many
examples; but the student who turns to the _Burlington Magazine_ for
July and August 1913 will see reproductions from a superb manuscript of
the late thirteenth century, Mr. Pierpont Morgan's "Manafi-i-Heiwan,"
and any one who has the good fortune to know M. Claude Anet or M.
Vignier can probably be put in the way of seeing some originals.
He will discover in the work of this early period two distinct
schools: one--of which the running ibexes in the "Manafi-i-Heiwan"
is an example--obviously related to Sung; the other--of which
the "Kalila and Dimna" miniatures[17] (dated 1236), and the
elephants from the "Manafi-i-Heiwan" (1295 _circa_) may be taken
as illustrations--reminding us rather of Sassanian art. Exquisite
perfection of line is the dominant characteristic of the first school;
in the second, we find a broader treatment, a more splendid disposition
of masses, and a more monumental design than in any other known school
of Persian painting. It is amongst the works of these thirteenth-century
painters that we must look for the discovered masterpieces of Persian
art.

In our present state of ignorance we may call this the great age. It is
the familiar age of fine Rhages pottery; and to compare the beautiful
drawing on the tw