Biografisk notat

Ernst J Grube received a doctorate from the Freie Universitaet in Berlin in 1955 and then was assistant to Ernst Kuehnel at the Staatliche Museen. In 1958 he went to The Metropolitan Museum in New York where, from 1962 to 1969 he worked in the Department of Islamic Art, becoming Curator in 1965; he was also Adjunct Professor of Islamic Art at Columbia University, and later taught Medieval and Islamic Art at the City University of New York. In 1972 he moved to Italy; there he taught Islamic art history, first in Padua and then, at the Oriental Institute in Naples, ultimately becoming Professor of Islamic Art at the University of Venice, where he taught between 1977 and 1988; between 1973 and 1978 he was also a member of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Iran. In the early 1980's he founded the journal Islamic Art. He has written over 150 scholarly articles and reviews, and a number of books, on all aspects of Islamic art. Most recent are Keshte, a catalogue of the Wolf Collection of Central Asian embroideries, and a major study of the painted ceilings of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo, published as the first Supplement to Islamic Art in 2005. The second volume on ceramics in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, A Rival to China, Later Islamic Pottery, is in preparation. Eleanor Sims has a doctorate in Islamic art history from the Institute of Fine Arts in New York City and has worked in the Islamic Department of The Metropolitan Museum. In the 1970's she taught at the Universities of Minnesota and Pennsylvania, as well as spending parts of each year with the Italian Archaeological Mission in Iran, studying the painted surfaces of both the Mausoleum of Oljaytu, in Sultaniyyah, and the Safavid buildings of Isfahan. Since the early 1980's, she has been professionally based in London, researching and writing on Islamic painting, and editing the journal Islamic Art with Ernst J. Grube. A prize-winning volume on the themes of Iranian painting, Peerless Images, was published in 2002. Forthcoming books include The Persian Book of Kings: The Windsor Castle Shahnama of 1648, with the late B. W. Robinson and Manijeh Bayani, written for the Roxburghe Club; and Visions of the Past: History and Epic Paintings from Iran and Turkey, based on the Nasser D. Khalili Collection.