Century-Old Vandalism of Islamic Art, and Its Price

On April 8 in an auction at Christie’s South Kensington, various inaccuracies betrayed the hazy understanding of the history, geography and culture of the lands that were dealt with. Fars is deep in the south of Iran, not in Western Iran. Khorasan is not exactly in Central Asia, and so on.

A “cast bronze rosewater sprinkler, North India, 16th century” was not a sprinkler but a wine decanter, as glass models filled with red wine seen in paintings clearly show.

Dating art can be problematic in this context.

On April 5 at Bonhams, a huge portrait of the Moghul emperor Jahangir painted in oil on cotton, 210 centimeters or 83 inches high with its calligraphic border, came on the block. When seen at Sotheby’s on Oct. 18, 1995, it had fetched £573,500 after raising questions about its actual period. It still does.

No other portrait of this size is known in 17th-century Moghul India. Jahangir’s eyes give a piercing look, different from the unfocused stare of the characters portrayed by Moghul artists, Jahangir included. The stiffness of the emperor’s hand resting on the arm of the throne is surprising, and the aura framing the head with its spindly rays is decidedly odd. A lumpy gray table looks like nothing on earth.

Bonhams, eager to verify the period of the painting, submitted a sample from the central field to be carbon tested. The 1440-1640 time span bears out the date of the cotton support, not of the painting. True, the pigments show no trace of modern color components. But if the portrait was done in a Revivalist style in the early 19th century, the pigments used would not either — traditional techniques were unchanged. Unfazed, bidders ran up the portrait to £1.42 million.

The rising fascination with royal history may be the reason that explains this gamble. Another portrait of Jahangir, in the usual small Moghul format, was sold at Christie’s for £825,250, 10 times what the experts expected.

At Sotheby’s, excitement over historic characters sent a silver-inlaid brass candlestick made for an official in the service of Toquztamur al-Hamawi, viceroy of Egypt (1340-41) and Syria (1342-45) climbing to a phenomenal £4.52 million.

The day some brass vessel from the Arab Middle East, the Iranian world or Turkey bearing the name of a major royal character turns up, if any remains outside museums, the sky will be the limit.