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162 PERSIAN MINIATURES
displeases me in the master. Sultan Mohamed
was, so the story goes, a pupil of Aga Mirek,
who was a pupil of Behzad.
This charming Sultan Mohamed belongs to
the middle of the sixteenth century, and its
companion illustration (Plate III, E) may be
placed some twenty years later. About this
last, however, it would be easy and excusable
to go wrong ; for from the local colour and
the head of the man who leads the horse it
would seem to have been painted in India.
We know that the album from which it comes
was for many years in that country ; yet I
cannot believe that this picture is the product
of any Indo-Persian school. It is too good :
there persists too much of the great Timourid
and Mongol tradition which,
as the work of
Sultan Mohamed shows, was still cherished by
the Persian artists of the sixteenth century.
That it is earlier than the seventeenth century
and the reign of Shah Abbas is beyond dispute ;
it is untainted, or almost untainted, with that
soft, slick, convictionless woolliness that was
brought to perfection by Riza Abbassi, the
court painter, and seems to have flattered
so happily the taste of the Persian grand
monarque. The figure of the kneeling princess
comes nearer to the style of Mirek than to
that of any other artist with whom I am
acquainted ; and, if I must hazard a guess,