Dār al-funūn and Painting in Transition from Traditional Approaches to Modern Perspective

In addition to the development of new sciences and technologies, the teachings of the Dār al-Funūn School influenced the attitude towards painting and its teaching in Iran. Iranian painting in the process of transition from traditional methods to realistic representation such as the Kamāl al-Mulk method is linked to the teachings of the Dār al-Funūn school. In re-reading the activities of the school, especially in the early years, we encounter painting in a faint and transient way; but it is not known what role painting was taught in the Dār al-Funūn, and why painting was also taught in a school that had opened to teach sciences and thechnology? Knowing that painting, based on contemporary narratives from the Dār al-Funūn, was a stage and part of the study of higher geometry adds to the importance of this question. The forthcoming research, based on scattered reports from the teaching of painting at the Dār al-Funūn, leads to the following questions: What is the painting in Dār al-Funūn? And what was the position of painting among the branches of science and technology? And what changes has the concept of painting undergone in its work process? The search for answers in contemporary scientific sources and in the correlation of painting with science, forms the basis of the present study. The research is carried out in a historical way by reflecting on the transformation of the meanings of words and the application of sciences, and by searching the tendencies and teachings of teachers and graduates of Dār al-Funūn, especially with a delay in the concepts of geometry, cartography and optics. This article answers that the common denominator of these branches is dealing with sizes, lines, surfaces, and objects. Findings show that the meaning of painting art in geometry is optics. Optics in the process of transition to a new perspective were first part of geometry and then, separating from geometry and old optics, became the basis of scientific studies in painting. The transformations of optics in Europe and the emergence of perspective as well as the geometric rules of representation have been the basis of the Dār al-Funūn's teachings on the approach to science as well as the formation of realistic painting in Iran.