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Benedict Carter

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2025-08-01
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2025-08-01
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  1. “Work on paper from the Islamic world, and that record remains today. Certainly, this particular folio definitely raised the bar for extant leaves from this particular royal from the 70s onwards all those top museums in the West and Islamic world who managed to quiet at least one illustrative folio. And of course the issue of cultural heritage and patrimony is very much a hot topic in the art market at the moment. I think in this particular instance it's rewarding to know that after 30 years since its first appearance at auction in 88 this work of art has now joined the collection of the Louis of Abu Dhabi. There it will be viewed by new generations of the public eager to learn about and be absorbed by this exceptional treasure.”

    2025-08-01 · Intelligence Squared · The Specialist | The Greatest Persian Manuscript: A Story Fit For Kings, with Benedict Carter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “And so we placed an estimate of £4 to $6 million on it, which at that point had doubled any estimate we had set before. The sale took place in end of October 2022, and so from the moment we announced that we were selling this, it did garner a huge amount of publicity. The emergence of a great quality leaf like this brought attention not just to the sale and to this particular audio, but it kind of refocused interest and the story of the manuscript again. When it came to the auction itself, no huge amount of excitement can really ever tell you what's actually going to happen. I thought for a moment it was going to sell on the low estimate because it was going extremely slowly. You could hear a pin drop, but another buyer joined the battle and little by little the potential buyers edged up and began trading bids and the auctioneer eventually brought the hammer down I think after about twenty-five minutes at 6.8 million pounds which was beyond the high estimate and totaled 8.1 million with fees and that made it the highest price achieved for any”

    2025-08-01 · Intelligence Squared · The Specialist | The Greatest Persian Manuscript: A Story Fit For Kings, with Benedict Carter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “Can just sort of get enveloped by it. It's a truly remarkable piece of drawing. So this particular folio was part of the parent manuscripts until its removal by Arthur Hosen. It then came to auction in 1988 where it was for sale actually at Christie's alongside thirteen other folios in a dedicated sale of fourteen leaves from the Sharnami of Chartamas, which at the time was called General Deferger was the Houghton Shahname because of the ownership of Arthur Houghton at the time. This leaf, I say flicking through that catalogue, I think it's arguably the finest of those offered in that sale. This one was estimated 150 to 200,000 pounds, which was a pretty huge sum in 1988. It was brought by a private European collector for above estimate at £230,000, and it remained in their collection for over thirty years until it was consigned to us. You only have to look at it to see what a glorious example it is. So we felt that we needed to set new ground for this series of pain.”

    2025-08-01 · Intelligence Squared · The Specialist | The Greatest Persian Manuscript: A Story Fit For Kings, with Benedict Carter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “When I look at this painting, and I can really only say this, I think, about this painting and maybe two others that I've had the privilege to handle personally is that you can just stare at it. The more you look at it, the more you see, you can sort of fall into this picture. The rocks on the left hand side, the way that they're drawn, which look like coral and they burst out of the painting's frame and spread out into the margins, which I think is something you see with this artist Mirza Ali in other paintings in the manuscript. But also just the composition in general, which is sort of in a three-part triangular system with the horses on the right hand side, Rustam and the Rocky Mountain crop in the middle, and then this wonderful sky. And then, you know, you look further and you see that there's a tree stretching into the sky. That's got all these songbirds sitting on it. And then you realize there's a stream, which is slightly oxidized, but one of the horses is drinking from it. And there's a partridge on a rock. Some of the rocks are molding into almost human or animal forms.”

    2025-08-01 · Intelligence Squared · The Specialist | The Greatest Persian Manuscript: A Story Fit For Kings, with Benedict Carter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “So it's quite large, but at its center taking up about two-thirds of the page is a painting in Gouash of roughly square format but sprawling out into the whole page on the left hand side. It's in superb condition and at the top of the painting a four columns of neat text in Persian handwritten and that deals with the text of this particular.”

    2025-08-01 · Intelligence Squared · The Specialist | The Greatest Persian Manuscript: A Story Fit For Kings, with Benedict Carter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “The most extraordinary chapter of the manuscript's journey was to take place in nineteen ninety four, the Iranian government managed to swap a single painting by the abstract expressionist painter Willem de Kuning. The painting was his nineteen fifty three masterpiece Woman three that had been acquired by the Empress of Iran, but in storage since the Revolution in nineteen seventy nine, and they swapped it for the bulk of the Shanama, including its binding and one hundred eighteen illustrated pages, save for those that had already been sold at auction or gifted to the Met. This exchange took place on the tarmac of Vienna Airport in a clean swap as part of a very complex deal that was organized by the legendary London art dealer Oliver Hawke. Interestingly enough, when Woman 3 was sold years later having been in the collection of David Geffen, it became at the time the most expensive painting ever sold. So that was where the parent manuscript ended up today back in Iran, some five hundred years later.”

    2025-08-01 · Intelligence Squared · The Specialist | The Greatest Persian Manuscript: A Story Fit For Kings, with Benedict Carter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “This was followed by a sale of seven folios at auction in 1976, and then other sales followed and so the great manuscripts began to be broken up. Today it would be almost unthinkable that a manuscript like this, with this royal provenance and this quality and this sort of touchstone of culture for Persian art would be broken up like that. Here at Sotherby's we had sales at various points in the 90s and 2000s They were well participated by international museums. By entering the marketplace, they at least could be protected by these museums. They could be housed in safety as well as their marvels exhibited to the public for the first time since 1903. As for the leaves that are outstanding, over the course of the last forty years there have been various sales and many have gone into museums. There are a dwindling amount left in private hands. I think we must be down to fewer than ten by now with that scarcity does come global demand.”

    2025-08-01 · Intelligence Squared · The Specialist | The Greatest Persian Manuscript: A Story Fit For Kings, with Benedict Carter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “Disbound the manuscript so individual leaves could be exhibited at the Grollier Club and elsewhere. And then he tried and failed to sell the manuscript whole to the Shah of Iran and the price given was $28.5 million and this was rejected. And the result of that was that in 1971 seventy six folios were donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York”

    2025-08-01 · Intelligence Squared · The Specialist | The Greatest Persian Manuscript: A Story Fit For Kings, with Benedict Carter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “In 1567, a Safavid embassy left Iran for Turkey with thirty four camels, loaded with gifts to be presented to the Ottoman Turkish Sultan Selim II, and the Shaname and Quran that went alongside it were at the very top of the list of tributes. After three hundred years the manuscript stayed in Turkey before it was acquired by Baron Edmund the Rothschild, who lent it for exhibition for the first time it had ever been seen in public, a muse desired decretif in Paris in nineteen oh three. Later on it was inherited by Maurice de Roth in nineteen thirty four. Then it was appropriated by the Nazi Party in World War two before it being restituted to the family in nineteen forty eight after the war. where it sold to American bibil Arthur A. Hoten junior. He was the benefactor of the Hoton Library at Harvard, and this is where the modern history of the manuscript really starts.”

    2025-08-01 · Intelligence Squared · The Specialist | The Greatest Persian Manuscript: A Story Fit For Kings, with Benedict Carter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “The book binders because producing illustrated and illuminated manuscript, whether it's an epic tale like this or a Quran, it's a sort of multifaceted production. So a lot of that is anonymous, but we know that it's pretty much the finest example, the finest Shaname that was ever made.”

    2025-08-01 · Intelligence Squared · The Specialist | The Greatest Persian Manuscript: A Story Fit For Kings, with Benedict Carter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “Dedicated and committed to the production of one book over twenty years. We know who is involved only since the 1970s and early 1980s when the manuscript was published in depth and studied in detail by the American scholar collector Stuart Carey Welsh and Martin Dixon when the manuscript was owned by the American bibliophar Arthur A. Houghton junior. Carrie Welsh and Dixon they went through the whole manuscript identifying and making attributions to the royal artists who were working in the Royal Atelier. In Iran in the Safravid period in the early sixteenth century so this painting for example is attributed by Kerwash to the artist Mirza Ali who is one of the foremost artists of the period and whose style can be identified throughout the manuscript and various other paintings but of course there's no colophon so we don't know who the scribe is who wrote all this very finely executed text or who the illuminators were.”

    2025-08-01 · Intelligence Squared · The Specialist | The Greatest Persian Manuscript: A Story Fit For Kings, with Benedict Carter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “This single folio is just one page from a manuscript that would have reached over 759 pages in total. It's from a royal copy of the Persian Book of Kings, the Shahnama, which is the greatest epoch of Persian literature composed by the poet Fidalsi in the early eleventh century, and this particular version was commissioned by Shizmail I, and then that commission carried on by his son Shah Tamas, who was only ten when he ascended the throne in fifteen twenty four. But it's a monumental achievement because it was profusely illustrated and illuminated by the greatest artists of the royal Atelier over a period of two decades. It's monumental achievement and one that we can't really compare with anything in the West. If you were to speak to any scholar of Islamic art, this is the zenith of Persian art in general. It's cut no corners. It's the royal artist working at the height of their powers.”

    2025-08-01 · Intelligence Squared · The Specialist | The Greatest Persian Manuscript: A Story Fit For Kings, with Benedict Carter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “Imagine a Renaissance emperor or a pope or a king decided to put together the finest possible version of an existing manuscript then illustrated by Leonardo Michelangelo Bellini, Raphael Giorgiona, it would be almost a surreal concept, but yet that is exactly what this is, but made in 16th century Persia.”

    2025-08-01 · Intelligence Squared · The Specialist | The Greatest Persian Manuscript: A Story Fit For Kings, with Benedict Carter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT