Image and its Position in Iranian Portrait Painting

This article is an investigation into the position, importance, and effect of image on Iranian portrait painting. It is an intertextual analysis of Persian poetry and painting, focusing the elements of mysticism in both. The discussion is documented offering paintings from different Persian painting schools so that it can better show how this field of art has always used the element of image and mystical understanding to convey a figurative universe. The article, first, introduces image and its position in Iranian painting, then contrasts the figurative elements in both Persian poetry and portrait painting, and finally concludes that Persian painting, using institutionalized signs and symbols in poetry has created its own figurative and ideal human. This feature can be found in Persian painting up to the first half of Qajar reign in the 13th century A. H.