Pallonji Shapoorji Mistry Memorial Lecture – 28 October 2024

Pallonji Shapoorji Mistry Memorial Lecture

By Prof Daniel J. Sheffield

Monday 28 October 2024 @ 5.30 pm

Khalili Lecture Theatre

Main Building of SOAS

No need to register for in-person attendance.

About the lecture

SSPIZS is pleased to announce the next Pallonji Shapoorji Mistry Memorial Lecture, with the key address given by Professor Daniel J. Sheffield.

For nearly two hundred and fifty years, Zoroastrians in Iran and India devoted considerable efforts to produce lavishly illustrated manuscripts of well-known stories. Today, more than a dozen illuminated Zoroastrian manuscripts survive in collections across the globe, providing a glimpse into the way in which early modern Zoroastrian communities visualized their history and their place in the cosmos. In this talk, Prof Sheffield will for the first time present a stylistic typology of Zoroastrian miniature painting as it relates to neighboring artistic traditions. Further, he will present some tentative arguments drawn from colophons of illustrated manuscripts about the relationship of patrons, scribes, and artists. Finally, Prof Sheffield will argue that these traditions of Zoroastrian manuscript art played a significant role in shaping lithographic print illustration pioneered by Parsi printers in nineteenth-century Bombay