Evidence for Grid Order in the Paintings Composition of the Bysonghori Shahnama

One of the most famous illustrated manuscripts that has been emerged in the history of layout and illustration, is Baysonghori Shahnameh. This book has been scribed by the order of Prince Baysunghur Mirza (802-837 AM/1400-1434 M (and nastaligh pen of prominent calligrapher Maulana Jafar Tabrizi (died in 860-862 AM/1456-1458 M) and has 22 miniature Majlis. Many of the researchers have been evaluated the style of painting in Majlises of this book excellent and have called it a new era in the history of Persian painting. An era in which artists get to a formal and regulated style. The style which is mostly referred to as the classical Persian painting style; it can be noted that one of the most striking features of it, is a method of composition which was established until centuries later. Although, unfortunately this method has not rightly been found yet; but in recent years, several attempts has been made to retrieve it. It seems the silent of historical sources about the process of composition in Persian miniatures on the one hand and the complexity of the spatial structure in these paintings on the other hand, were the main causes of this apparent deficiency. So that the process of composition in Persian miniatures has remained a mystery yet. Although some researchers believe that the Iranian paintings have been combined based on hands-free arrangements’ stereotypes and prototypes; but some recent researches have shown the networking system is responsible for the composition in the Iranian paintings. This structure can be easily achieved from dividing the length and width of a work into equal segments. With reliance to descriptive-analytical case method and by using the quantitative style, the following article has been written and with visual analysis of four Majlis from 22 miniatures of Baysonghori Shahnameh- i.e. Majlis of Zal sees Roudabeh, the battle of Goudarz with Piran, crying of Faramarz on Roustam’s coffin and the battle of Kaykhousro with Afrasiyab and hosts- tries to show that this system is the foundation of designing and regulation of manuscript’s miniature. As can be seen, this structure in Majlis of Zal sees Roudabeh has designed on the basis of tabulating and Mastrkeshy text format, in the battle of Goudarz with Piran Majlis, this skeleton is resulted from divding the length and width of a work into equal segments and in the battle of Kaykhousro with Afrasiyab and hosts Majlis, the artist has been able to modeling this structure from divding the length and width of a page into equal segments. Finally, in crying of Faramarz on Roustam’s coffin Majlis, the painter has calculated the dimension of the work on the basis of text frame at first, then he divided it into two section; indoor and outdoor. Now by dividing the length of each part into equal segments and dividing the width of them with reliance to the golden proportions, he could easily to define the location of secondary elements in the work.