Mirza Gadim Iravani

The figure in this small picture in Baku is a dervish, a wandering Sufi mendicant, set against a flat green ground and painted in oil on glass. Mirza Gadim Iravani began with work like this, painting on glass and fabric, in Erivan, today's Yerevan, in the middle of the 19th century. In Azerbaijan he is regarded as one of the founders of easel painting.

He came from a family of decorators, and his biggest commission came in the 1850s. The Russian authorities, who had taken Erivan in 1827, asked him to restore the paintings in the Hall of Mirrors of the Sardar's Palace, the former residence of the Persian governors. He repainted the murals and added large oil portraits of Fath-Ali Shah, of the last governor and his brother, and of the legendary hero Rustam. The palace was pulled down in 1914. Several of its portraits survived, and they are now in the Art Museum of Georgia in Tbilisi.