TEHRAN — In a homecoming charged with poetic symmetry, the body of master painter and miniaturist Mahmoud Farshchian will be laid to rest in Isfahan, his birthplace and spiritual axis, beside the tomb of the Safavid-era poet Saeb Tabrizi. 
According to his representative in Iran, Sajad Mohammadyarzadeh, this decision reflects Farshchian’s final will — a pivot from earlier wishes to be buried in the shrine of Imam Reza (AS), toward what he called simply “mām-e vatan” (the motherland).
Few artists in modern Iranian memory have so fully merged national iconography, Shi’i spirituality, and painterly innovation as Farshchian. His luminous compositions — including Ashura, The Guarantor of the Gazelle, and Kowsar — transcended mere illustration, transforming Persian miniature into a deeply emotive and contemporary language of metaphysical longing. His lines did not depict scenes; they sang them.
President Masoud Pezeshkian, in an official message of condolence, described Farshchian’s legacy as “a radiant jewel in the crown of Iranian culture.” 
“With unparalleled vision,” he wrote, “he breathed new life into a traditional form and elevated the name of Iran on the world stage.”
Tributes have poured in from across the spectrum of Iran’s artistic and religious institutions. Hojjatoleslam Mostafa Rostami, head of the Supreme Leader’s university representative office, praised Farshchian as a “guardian of sacred form,” whose paintings remain a “spiritual and cultural treasure for Iran and the Islamic world.”
But beyond the galleries and institutions, Farshchian’s vision found its most enduring expression in places of worship. His designs for the shrines of Imam Reza (AS) in Mashhad and Imam Hussein (AS) in Karbala — both created pro bono, as he once recounted with modest pride — represent a rare synthesis of art and devotion. 
“They asked me to design the new shrine,” he said in a now-circulating interview, “and I dropped everything. Six different proposals, each unique, with no similarity to anything that came before. I offered them freely, with no expectation.”
From his early days at the School of Fine Arts in Isfahan to his global acclaim in Europe and the United States, Farshchian remained tethered to the metaphysical scaffolding of Persian aesthetics. Now, in death as in life, he returns — not just to soil, but to the soul of the culture he so masterfully rendered.