Ali-Akbar Tajvidi

Ali-Akbar Tajvidi was born into an illustrious artistic dynasty in Tehran; his father Hadi Tajvidi was a master of Persian miniature art. Educated at the University of Tehran and the Sorbonne in Paris, where he earned his doctorate in art history and archaeology, he was appointed director of fine arts at the Iranian Ministry of Culture.

Tajvidi combined masterful miniaturist brushwork with profound scholarly erudition. His landmark academic treatise, A Look at Iranian Painting from the Fifth to Tenth Century, remains the standard scholarly reference on classical Persian manuscript illumination. He lived and taught in Paris for his final four decades, exhibiting worldwide.