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PERSIAN MINIATURES 163
I will suggest that this is the work of some
Persian pupil of Mirek who went to try his
luck at the court of the Great Mogul.
With Shah Abbas and the seventeenth
century Persian art becomes definitely and
hopelessly second-rate. From the ruins
emerge a variety of decadent schools of which
two deserve mention. The academic school
continued the Behzad tradition, and its hard
but capable style did well enough for copying
Persian old masters, European paintings by
such artists as Bellini, and engravings by such
artisans as Marcantonio an amusing product
of this last kind of activity (also from a book
in Mr. Ruck's possession) will be reproduced
later in the Burlington Magazine. At the
same time there appeared a freer and softer
style, examples of which, at first sight, sometimes
remind one of a particularly good Conder.
In India developed a number of schools,
romantic, picturesque, and literal ; of these,
a queer sensual charm notwithstanding, it
must be confessed that the two main charac-
teristics are weakness of design and a sweetly
sugary colour. But I am straying beyond
any boundary that my illustrations could
justify. I have been able to give excellent
examples of the late middle period "of Persian
painting. In the two first we caught an echo
of the great Timourid age and felt a premoni-