Persia and the West

Persia and the West PDF Author: John Boardman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780500051023
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first kings of the Achaemenid Persian empire, Cyrus the Great and Darius,sought to devise for their capital cities new styles in monumental architecture and sculpture to express their imperial status and mastery of the known world. With no local tradition to guide designers, a homogeneous style was created from the example of the many new subjects - Ionian Greeks, Lydians, Mesopotamians, and Egyptians. This book traces these sources and explores the way that traditional Achaemenid motifs, if not styles, also permeated the empire. The Achaemenid Persian experiment was unique in antiquity, and it was successful for as long as the empire lasted. Even after Alexander the Great brought about its downfall, it continued to influence the arts from Greece to India. This is a record of the brilliant flowering of an artificial yet unified construct, unmatched in the art of the Old World.

Persia and the West

Persia and the West PDF Author: John Boardman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780500051023
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first kings of the Achaemenid Persian empire, Cyrus the Great and Darius,sought to devise for their capital cities new styles in monumental architecture and sculpture to express their imperial status and mastery of the known world. With no local tradition to guide designers, a homogeneous style was created from the example of the many new subjects - Ionian Greeks, Lydians, Mesopotamians, and Egyptians. This book traces these sources and explores the way that traditional Achaemenid motifs, if not styles, also permeated the empire. The Achaemenid Persian experiment was unique in antiquity, and it was successful for as long as the empire lasted. Even after Alexander the Great brought about its downfall, it continued to influence the arts from Greece to India. This is a record of the brilliant flowering of an artificial yet unified construct, unmatched in the art of the Old World.

Persia and the Greeks

Persia and the Greeks PDF Author: A. R. Burn
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780758135629
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 586

Get Book Here

Book Description


Towards One World

Towards One World PDF Author: Warwick Ball
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781907318023
Category : Excavations (Archaeology)
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Persian Empire was the first major eastern power to actually extend its borders into Europe. They came in the 6th century BC seeking to incorporate south-eastern Europe into their empire. Yet Iran's foothold in Europe was tiny, distant and brief. Their contact is usually viewed in terms of conflict: the Graeco-Persian wars, the conquests of Alexander, the numerous wars between Rome and Iran. But Europe's contact with ancient Persia was neither short-lived nor conflicting: it was the beginnings of a complex interaction between East and West that continues to this day.

Persian Fire

Persian Fire PDF Author: Tom Holland
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307386988
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 466

Get Book Here

Book Description
A "fresh...thrilling" (The Guardian) account of the Graeco-Persian Wars. In the fifth century B.C., a global superpower was determined to bring truth and order to what it regarded as two terrorist states. The superpower was Persia, incomparably rich in ambition, gold, and men. The terrorist states were Athens and Sparta, eccentric cities in a poor and mountainous backwater: Greece. The story of how their citizens took on the Great King of Persia, and thereby saved not only themselves but Western civilization as well, is as heart-stopping and fateful as any episode in history. Tom Holland’s brilliant study of these critical Persian Wars skillfully examines a conflict of critical importance to both ancient and modern history.

Persian Interventions

Persian Interventions PDF Author: John O. Hyland
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421423707
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
"In this book, Hyland examines the international relations of the First Persian Empire (the Achaemenid Empire) as a case study in ancient imperialism. He focuses in particular on Persian's relations with the Greek city-states and its diplomatic influence over Athens and Sparta. Previous studies have emphasized the ways in which Persia sought to protect its borders by playing the often warring Athens and Sparta off each other, prolonging their conflicts through limited aid and shifts of alliance. Hyland proposes a new model, employing Persian ideological texts and economic documents to contextualize the Greek narrative framework, that demonstrates that Persian Kings were less interested in control of the Ionian region where Greece bordered the empire than in displays of universal power through the acquisition of Athens or Sparta as client states. On the other hand, the establishment of "Pax Persica" beyond the Aegean was delayed by Persian efforts to limit the interventions' expense, and missteps in dealing with fractious Greek allies. This reevaluation of Persia's Greek relations marks an important contribution to scholarship on the Achaemenid empire and Greek history, and has value for the broader study of imperialism in the ancient world."--Provided by publisher.

Ancient Persia in Western History

Ancient Persia in Western History PDF Author: Sasan Samiei
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857724142
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Get Book Here

Book Description
Ancient Persia in Western History is a measured rejoinder to the dominant narrative that considers the Graeco-Persian Wars to be merely the first round of an oft-repeated battle between the despotic 'East' and the broadly enlightened 'West'. Sasan Samiei analyses the historiography which has skewed our understanding of this crucial era - contrasting the work of Edward Gibbon and Goethe, which venerated Classicism and Hellenistic history, with later writers such as John Linton Myres. Finally, Samiei explores the cross-cultural encounters which constituted the Achaemenid period itself, and repositions it as essential to the history of Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Real Birds in Imagined Gardens

Real Birds in Imagined Gardens PDF Author: Kavita Singh
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 1606065181
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 120

Get Book Here

Book Description
Accounts of paintings produced during the Mughal dynasty (1526–1857) tend to trace a linear, “evolutionary” path and assert that, as European Renaissance prints reached and influenced Mughal artists, these artists abandoned a Persianate style in favor of a European one. Kavita Singh counters these accounts by demonstrating that Mughal painting did not follow a single arc of stylistic evolution. Instead, during the reigns of the emperors Akbar and Jahangir, Mughal painting underwent repeated cycles of adoption, rejection, and revival of both Persian and European styles. Singh’s subtle and original analysis suggests that the adoption and rejection of these styles was motivated as much by aesthetic interest as by court politics. She contends that Mughal painters were purposely selective in their use of European elements. Stylistic influences from Europe informed some aspects of the paintings, including the depiction of clothing and faces, but the symbolism, allusive practices, and overall composition remained inspired by Persian poetic and painterly conventions. Closely examining magnificent paintings from the period, Singh unravels this entangled history of politics and style and proposes new ways to understand the significance of naturalism and stylization in Mughal art.

Book Arts of Isfahan

Book Arts of Isfahan PDF Author: Alice Taylor
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 089236338X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 102

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the seventeenth century, the Persian city of Isfahan was a crossroads of international trade and diplomacy. Manuscript paintings produced within the city’s various cultural, religious, and ethnic groups reveal the vibrant artistic legacy of the Safavid Empire. Published to coincide with an exhibition at the Getty Museum, Book Arts of Isfahan offers a fascinating account of the ways in which the artists of Isfahan used their art to record the life around them and at the same time define their own identities within a complex society.

The Orientalists

The Orientalists PDF Author: Kristian Davies
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Orientalists pursues the mid to late 19th century, when American and European artists traveled and painted throughout the Holy Land and India. The highly cinematic images they created suggest a great influence on modern visual culture.

Persophilia

Persophilia PDF Author: Hamid Dabashi
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674495799
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Get Book Here

Book Description
From the Biblical period and Classical Antiquity to the rise of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, aspects of Persian culture have been integral to European history. A diverse constellation of European artists, poets, and thinkers have looked to Persia for inspiration, finding there a rich cultural counterpoint and frame of reference. Interest in all things Persian was no passing fancy but an enduring fascination that has shaped not just Western views but the self-image of Iranians up to the present day. Persophilia maps the changing geography of connections between Persia and the West over the centuries and shows that traffic in ideas about Persia and Persians did not travel on a one-way street. How did Iranians respond when they saw themselves reflected in Western mirrors? Expanding on Jürgen Habermas’s theory of the public sphere, and overcoming the limits of Edward Said, Hamid Dabashi answers this critical question by tracing the formation of a civic discursive space in Iran, seeing it as a prime example of a modern nation-state emerging from an ancient civilization in the context of European colonialism. The modern Iranian public sphere, Dabashi argues, cannot be understood apart from this dynamic interaction. Persophilia takes into its purview works as varied as Xenophon’s Cyropaedia and Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Handel’s Xerxes and Puccini’s Turandot, and Gauguin and Matisse’s fascination with Persian art. The result is a provocative reading of world history that dismantles normative historiography and alters our understanding of postcolonial nations.