Recreating Pre-Seljuk Paintings based on Visual Elements of Nishapur's Buff Ware Ceramics (Samanid era)

To explain the features of Persian paintings prior to the 7th century, art researchers rely on the 5th-6th centuries Seljuk ceramics that were painted in accordance with the style of the oldest remaining illustrated manuscript, the 7th century Varka-o-Golsha. In doing so, they disregard the oldest paintings of Iran's Islamic era, found on Nishapur's buff ware's figurative ceramics of Samanid reign in 3rd-4th centuries, on the basis of a seemingly disconnect between their visual features and those of Varka-o-Golsha's. The present study aims to resolve this misinterpretation, using Chomsky's theory of deep and surface structures. Therefore, using Samanid ceramics, we can provide explanations about visual elements of pre-Seljuk illustrated manuscripts despite the fact that none of them have survived. To demonstrate this, first I analyzed 110 figurative Samanid ceramics, 26 of which are reported in my article. Then, I compared these ceramics with Seljuk/Mongol paintings. Based on the analysis and compression, I argue that Samanid painters knew about the visual function of frames, picture space, and the simple methods of vertical perspective drawing by increasing visual layers, but were unable to depict 3rd dimension of objects. The artists used painting some natural elements, typically flower shrubs, for filling/decorating foregrounds, not for naturalistic purposes. They drew the most important figures taller than others (i.e. perspective of authority) for emphasizing their political/social rankings. The Samanid artists avoided to display the Aura, unlike Sasanian and Seljuk artworks.