"Reverse Perspective" in New julfa Armenian Miniature Paintings of 17th century

Following the ongoing Iran-Ottoman wars in the early 17th century, a group of Armenians migrated to Iran from their homeland at the command of Shah Abbas. These Armenians mostly settled in New Julfa in Isfahan. The production of illustrated copies has always been important for Armenians, but it has been doubly important for Armenian immigrants. Because in this way and using various styles, they showed their connections with their predecessors. For this reason, the paintings produced in Julfa during the seventeenth century have a considerable stylistic diversity. Gradually, by the end of the seventeenth century, the stylistic unity of these works also increased. In a way, the Julfa School of painting can be considered as the last flourishing of Armenian painting before the decline. The purpose of this study is to investigate the common foundations of the application of "points of view", and the space creation based on these points of view in the paintings of New Julfa in the seventeenth century. This research seeks to analyze how the points of view and construction of a visual space have been combined in the miniature of this school. The concept of "Reverse Perspective", as a form of perspective was employed to analyze the paintings, which is one of the key concept of analyzing visual point of view by Lev Zhegin. For this purpose, miniature painting of this school were examined using a descriptive-analytical method. These paintings were selected from the influential Armenian stylists of that period from the beginning to the end of the seventeenth century, so that they could show the tendencies and stylistic diversity of that school in that period. Thus, the works of Yakob of julfa, Mesrop of Xizan, Hayrapet of julfa, Martiros the priest, Malnazar and Aghapir. Examination of these miniatures revealed that orthogonals in the representation of objects converged not on one horizon but to several regions. In other words, different objects in the image had different points of view. Results of analyzing the paintings of New Julfa, showed the various types of deformation due to the dynamics of points of view. The deformations were reflected either in the summarization of various forms in different combination of views. Indeed, the deformation were visually perceived in the different combinations of forms in Armenian Architecture, convexity of heads and bodies of the created figures, as well as the accretion of supplementary planes to the faces, the suspension of objects and their rotation towards the viewer. Therefore, it can be said that despite the stylistic diversity of the studied cases, the dynamics of point of view has played a major role in the formation of visual space in these paintings. Since the of Florensky and Zhegin's theories about the Reverse Perspective was based on the dynamics of point of view, one can say that the artworks of the New Julfa school generally represent of reverse perspective in the construction of space.