A Comparative Study of Methods for Creating Architectural Spaces in the Persian Illustrations of Bathhouses

Literary works have provided a noticeable contexttoconsider and depict the architecture of bathhouses in miniatures. These paintings have a considerable correspondence to reality. Comparing the characteristics ofsuch works with the architecture of bathhouseslead to the results which indicatethe paintingsbear many features of these bathhouses, which in turn reveal a certain kind of realism in such works. The aim of this paper is tostudy and compare the architecture of bathhouses and their illustration in Persian painting in order to determine how close they are to the reality orbeing depicted realistically. Therefore using historical and descriptive methods the existing illustrations of bathhouses in Persian paintings are studied and compared to the bathhouse architecture. 23 instances of Persian painting have been studied and compared to the bathhouse architecture. The results indicate that many features of a bathhouse from architectural spaces, installations, structure and lighting are depicted through various methods. Also principles like size, diagram, geometrical shape and special proportions are evident.