Plate with Youth in Landscape Setting

Under the Safavids (1501–1736) in Iran, a wide array of craft traditions flourished, including an active glazed pottery and tile industry. This earthenware plate is a handsome example of a distinctive underglaze-painted ceramic ware called Kubachi after a small hill town in the Caucasian province of Daghestan, where numerous examples have been found. As Kubachi itself was not known as a center of pottery production, it is likely that the ware was made elsewhere, perhaps in Tabriz, then an important commercial center in northwestern Iran. Sometime in the mid-sixteenth century, the Kubachi ware tradition developed a polychrome style marked by designs in brownish red, green, blue, and yellow ochre outlined in purple black on a cream slip under a thin crackly glaze. Although the decoration of Kubachi ware is usually based on floral designs, a number of bowls and tiles feature humans and animals on a leafy ground.

The Cincinnati dish depicts the head and upper torso of a turbaned young nobleman set against a backdrop of willowy, flowering stalks. The freehand drawing style and the subject’s languid gaze are strongly reminiscent of contemporary Persian painting from the reign of Shah Abbas the Great (1589–1628). The influence of Ottoman Iznik pottery is visible in the colors employed, while the scale-pattern wave border design is loosely adopted from Chinese models transmitted through late Ming Dynasty export porcelain ware.