Sadiqi Beg

Painting shows an Aulad tied to a tree because he is not trusted after helping Rostam, a legendary hero in epics. This painting reflects a stylistic change to Sadiqi Beg's artwork. Sadiqi Beg (; c. 1533 – 1610), also referred to as Sadiqi Beg Afshar was a Persian painter, poet, biographer, draftsman, soldier, and miniaturist of the Safavid era. Born in Tabriz in about 1533, he spent a number of years as a wandering dervish before settling in Qazvin where he occupied several positions in the royal court. Ultimately, he was dismissed from a post in the royal library in 1596, and he spent his final years focused on his own writing before his death in Isfahan in 1610.

Background Sadiqi Beg was born in Tabriz, the historic capital of the Safavid dynasty, into the Khodabandalu Turkoman tribe in 940/1533. He came from a notable line of Turkish soldiers that migrated from Syria to support Shah Ismail I who founded the Safavid dynasty in 1501. His father was assassinated when Sadiqi was young, and, despite his family’s noble history, he was left without an inheritance.

Royal appointments Sadiqi Beg was initially invited to serve under Shah Isma’il II . Following this brief royal appointment, while Mohammad Khodabanda was in power from 1578 to 1587, he left Qazvin to fight in the Battle of Astarabad (ca. 1581).

He remained absent from the royal court throughout the rule of Mohammad Khodabanda, from 1576 to 1588, and during this time he focused on single page works rather than large-scale manuscripts.

In 1593, just before leaving his royal employ, Sadiqi Beg personally commissioned and illustrated a copy of Kashifi’s Anvār-I Suhaylī (Lights of Canopus). The volume included 107 drawings, possibly all by Sadiqi himself, and it demonstrates his personal investment in the arts.

He was also known for popularizing the Iranian "calligraphic style of drawing." This method is evident in works such as Dragon and Clouds (ca. 1600) which is currently held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Examples of Sadiqi's work survive in several museums and private collections, and they are highly valued instances of Safavid era artwork. In 1996, a gouache miniature on gold paper, Portrait d'une jeune femme assise sur un rocher (1590), attributed to Sadiqi, sold at auction in Paris for 80,000 French francs (15,792 U.S. dollars; 12,604 euros; or 10,301 British pounds).

Writing

Sadiqi's native language was Chaghatai, however he was proficient in two additional Turkish literary languages. The Majma’ al-khavass (Lives of Artists) is considered one of his most important written works, and it provides biographical sketches of some of the era's leading poets, artists and connoisseurs. Sadiqi Beg’s writings are an important tool for interpreting historical Persian miniature paintings as he details styles and provides instruction for making art. His Persian writing style was inspired by classic Persian artists, including Khaqani, Ẓahīr, Kamal od-Din Esmail, and Saadi Shirazi. Uniquely, historians note that he avoided politics by abstaining from using religious denominations to refer to different techniques in his art, and he used classical styles while critiquing contemporary practices.