Portrait of Muzaffar al-Din Shah and Aziz Khan Mukri

This painting by Muhammad Hasan Afshar is a dual portrait painted for coveying a political message. The painting perfectly mirrors the political reality of that period i,e the prince holds the center but the physical presence of Aziz Khan Mukri—the Sardar-e Koll which means commander-in-chief reveals who actually held the power both military, and administrative keeping the provincial government stable.It commemorates the crown prince Muzaffar al-Din Mirza who later reign as Muzaffar al-Din Shah alongside his tutor and guardian, Aziz Khan Mukri which was a convention in Qajar court. The practice of pairing an apparent heir along with his guardian or tutor in a single frame also highlighted loyalty and mentorship and reinforced the legitimacy and readiness of the incoming heir to rule while also honouring the tutor's status and service to the dynasty.The Persian inscription in the upper cartouche which is part of the work reads as an honorific dedication to "the honorable son of the king of kings, heir to the throne of the great persian nation.Scholars who study the Qajar period painters like Afshar found that these painters were trained and employed through the royal workshop system, the naqqashkhana — a hierarchical guild-like structure with defined ranks of artists, running in parallel with more Western-style academic training. A gouache-and-gold court portrait like the Muzaffar al-Din and Aziz Khan double portrait represents essentially the tail end of that older workshop tradition characterized by small-scale, derived from manuscripts and ground painting of gold right before Qajar royal image making the decisive change toward the large oil portraiture and, increasingly, photographic image paintings.