Stlukesguild

The Shahnameh of Tabriz remained intact and in near-perfect condition well into the 20th century. The calligraphy remained crisp, the paper flawless and the brilliant colors remained virtually unchanged, due in part, no doubt, to the fact that the book had seldom been opened for reading thanks to a lack of understanding of the Persian language (Farsi) and only upon rare occasions for the display of the paintings to honored visitors.

In 1959 the Baron Edmond de Rothschild, sold the intact book to the American collector, Arthur Houghton. Rothschild, who had taken special care to ensure that the miniatures were always well-protected had initially turned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with the belief that a work of such importance deserved to be housed in an appropriate institution. The Met, however, on the recommendation of the board of trustees (headed by Houghton!) passed on the prospect, at which time Houghton snatched it up it for himself.

Initially Houghton placed the book at Harvard with the understanding that an elegant and scholarly facsimile would be published by the university’s academic press. It was thought that Houghton might eventually donate the work to his alma mater. Harvard’s Fogg Museum contained a renowned collection of Islamic art, an ideal setting for the work. In 1972, however, Houghton became “piqued” with the university’s delay in the production of the book and he pulled the Shahnameh and brought it to New York.

At that time, after remaining intact for over 400 years, Houghton inexplicably tore 78 of the finest paintings from the book and presented them as a gift to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Thomas Hoving, then director of the Met states, “I was flatly opposed to the breaking up of the book in any fashion. I confronted Arthur physically, personally on the matter, but he was determined to do this, and he was the chairman of our board of trustees, after all.” On the other hand, Hoving also admitted that Houghton’s gift “was like getting a whole bunch of Michelangelo paintings from out of the blue.”

As the museum held non-profit status Houghton sought to claim a sizable tax reduction. Unfortunately the bequest came at a point in which the government was becoming increasingly suspicious of deductions claimed for the donation of art. A gift this size was enough to trigger an audit by the IRS, who disallowed Houghton’s claim. Houghton became terrified that the government would eventually begin to investigate all of his business dealings… especially his various charitable foundations which had acted as fronts for the CIA during the Cold War.

Houghton’s fears (“unbelievably paranoid” according to Hoving) led him to the irrational decision to dispose of the remains of the Shahnameh. He initially offered it to the Shah of Iran, but the $20 million asking price was rejected. At this point he began to consign a few pieces at a time (prudently to avoid “flooding the market” and hurting his price) to Christie’s of London for public auction. The £785,000 realized by the sale of the first seven folio pages should certainly have proved to the IRS that Houghton’s claim as to the monetary value of his donation to the Met was in no way inflated.

Over the next decade or so Houghton continued to remove further folios from the Shahnameh and consign them to the auction block. This wholesale pillage of one of the greatest masterpieces of world art only came to a halt when Houghton died in 1990. By that time only 120 of the plates remained. All that exists today to suggest the coherent magnificence of the book as it originally existed is the scholarly limited edition facsimile eventually published by Harvard.

In spite of the irreparable vandalism that the Shahnameh had suffered, the Iranians were still more than eager to get what remained of their cultural patrimony. The estimated $20-million price tag, however, was impossible to justify for a mere work of art, especially following the prolonged and devastating war with Iraq. Eventually an ingenious barter was worked out between Houghton’s estate and the Iranian government.

The Iranians had been attempting to get rid of certain “decadent” paintings that were “unsuitable” for public exhibition under the Islamic rule. Among these was the painting, Woman III, by the Abstract Expressionist, Willem de Kooning, to which a like value of $20 million had been arbitrarily assigned. The trade took place under clandestine conditions upon the neutral turf of the Vienna airport. The remains of the Shahnameh were returned to in Iran in triumph and proudly put upon public display in Tehran, in the Museum of Contemporary Art which had sacrificed the De Kooning. The De Kooning, on the other hand, was privately sold for an undisclosed sum to the media executive, David Geffen, and immediately disappeared from public view.

The great British art critic, David Sylvester, a champion of Modernism and admitted admirer of De Kooning, was quoted as saying that “the Shahnameh was worth at least 20 paintings by De Kooning, and that the Houghton Foundation had been the loser in exchanging the work for one painting by De Kooning, and that the Iranian government had actually recovered the Shahnameh gratis.” One cannot easily question Sylvester’s claim, considering the fact that in 2006 just a single folio painting of the Shahnameh was auctioned off for $1.7 million, making it the 7th most-expensive book or part of a book sold that year… in spite of it being but a single page.

The parts of the Shahnameh can be found in collections around the world, including not only the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but also The State Hermitage Museum in Russia and, obviously, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran. The book was a entire art gallery between two covers and almost every individual painting is worthy of careful examination. It was one of the most magical works of art ever created; a virtual visual fairy-tale. Looking at the paintings one can easily see why artists as diverse as Ingres, Delacroix, Gauguin, Matisse, Klee, Beckmann, Kandinsky, etc… were greatly impressed with and inspired by Persian painting. At the same time one would hope that the tragic events surrounding the Shahnameh rooted in greed and a disregard for the cultural achievements outside one’s own culture would have taught us a lesson not soon forgotten. Unfortunately the looting of the Baghdad Museum following the invasion of Iraq suggests that we may still have far to go.

Bibliographic sources:

Basbanes, Nicholas A., A Splendor of Letters; The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World, HarperCollins Publishers, NY 2003, ISBN:0-06-008287-9

Blair, Sheila S. and Bloom, Jonathan M., The Art and Architecture of Islam, 1250-1800,
Yale University Press, NY 1994, ISBN: 0-300-05888-8

Danby, Miles, Moorish Style, Phaidon Press, London 1995, ISBN: 0-7148-3861-6

Davis, Dick (translation and Introduction) Abolqasem Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, The Persian Book of Kings, Penguin Books, NY 2006, ISBN: 978-0-14-310493-3

Ferrier, R.W. ed., The Arts of Persia, Yale University Press, NY 1989, ISBN-10: 0300039875

Piortrovski, M.B. and Rogers, J.M. editors, Heaven on Earth: Art from Islamic Lands, Prestel Verlag, Munich, Berlin, London, NY 2004, ISBN:3-7913-3055-1