Exploring Ways of Perspective in Iranian Traditional Paintings Based upon Ibn Al-Haytham’s Theories in Al-Manazir

The utilization of perspective rules in Iranian paintings (Miniatures) follows a different path in comparison with the common application of the method in western painting, designed in the renaissance period. In Iranian paintings, people’s height does not lessen when they are placed farther in the scenery. How large or small the figures appear, does not depend on the place they occupy in the scene, rather their size represents their divine, political or social status. To prevent any obstacles on the way of communicating this message, the farther figures are painted in the same size as the closer ones, but higher. Art historians explained this unique technique: “Whatever is farther is higher” and named it “vertical perspective”. Although this expression is used for decades to explain perspective in Iranian paintings, it seems that such reasoning is not adequate for justifying the various sorts of presented perspectives and their hidden significations, because it is not acceptable to imagine this hundreds of years old art in service of visualizing the literary narratives of literature, employing one of the most crucial elements in representing the sceneries, in such a primitive way. The research questions of this paper have been formed based upon the same doubts: What is the basis of formation of perspective in Iranian paintings? Is it possible to use this base to understand the perspective of these paintings the same way as the people contemporary to the art works used to understand it? Old optics- like Al-manazir, written byIbn Al-Haytham – makes it possible to see this concept and methods of presenting it from the old Iranians’ view-point. Using the findings of optics presented in Al-Manazir , one can realize that old Iranians believed understanding the depth of the scenery was impossible for the mind, unless it perceived some smaller concepts such as shapes, separations or continuity, distance, magnitude of distance and position of the objects. Six unique methods of representing perspective in Iranian paintings have been discovered, on the basis of the mentioned ideas which are different from one another in terms of the depth they present in scenery, functions and significations they communicate: implication of perspective 1- in a crowd (in audience with king, large numbers of people in armies); 2- in a little number of people (the royal private banquets in honour of foreign ambassadors, or friendly gatherings); 3-in limited or close-up scenes; 4- in vast or long-shot scenes; 5- with ordered and connected body (putting the figures behind and in front of natural separators such as mountains, rocks, trees, etc.); and 6-via buildings (paintings in which architectural buildings provide the viewer with an illusion of depth). The present research tries to bring understanding of modern audience closer to the one of viewers who lived centuries ago and reread these art works with their own contemporary mental-point. It is a historical research in which Almanazir’s fundaments is explained and perspective is analyzed and explained. It simultaneously explains the artistic and scientific frameworks, too.