elfth-and thirteenth-century pots with the miniatures
of this period is to let a flood of light on to the study of both. Mr.
Kevorkian has, or had, a wonderful painting from "The History of the
Kalifs" by Tabari (about 1200), the figures of which might have walked
straight out of a Rhages bowl into which they had walked some fifty
years earlier direct from Western China. Yet, admirable as this
thirteenth century is, I do not believe that it is in fact the supreme
age of Persian painting. Certainly it is not the primitive age. This is
an art that comes out of a long tradition. And just as we have already
discovered pottery earlier than and surpassing that of the thirteenth
century, so I hope and believe we shall yet see primitive Persian
paintings superior to anything that the late pre-Mongol and Mongol
period can show. For the present we can only say that the works of this
period are not much inferior to the greatest that the genius of any race
or age has created.

In 1335 begins what is known as the Timourid age--the age beloved above
all others by discerning connoisseurs--and it is tempting to assign to
this famous period the illustrations in a manuscript belonging to Mr.
Herramaneck, now in the possession of Mr. Arthur Ruck, from which are
drawn the paintings reproduced on Plate I. This temptation is
strengthened by the fact that the manuscript is said to be dated 1398;
yet it is a temptation to which I am unwilling to yield. Rather, I
incline to think that these are the work of an early contemporary of
Behzad, by whom they are not influenced, and that they belong,
therefore, to that interesting period of transition which lies between
the Timourids of the fifteenth and the Sefevaeans of the sixteenth
century. If we turn to the _Burlington Magazine_ for October 1912, we
can compare our Plate I, a, with two paintings, one in M. Claude Anet's
collection dating from the fourteenth century, the other from M.
Meyer-Riefstahl's belonging to the fifteenth. All have Mongol
affinities: but in M. Anet's picture, though the rather finicking and
academic drawing of the tree shows that already under the early
Timourids the full Persian style was developed, there are yet to be
found traces of a monumental design that had almost disappeared by the
end of the fifteenth century.

The work here illustrated is too "descriptive" and not sufficiently
"monumental" to be assigned to the Timourid age, and so I give it to the
late fifteenth