Shah Abbas: The Remaking of Iran, at the British Museum

Not many individuals create a new style in art - and those who do tend to be artists or architects, not rulers. Yet Shah Abbas, who came to power in Iran in the late 16th century, stimulated an aesthetic renaissance of the highest order. His building projects, religious gifts and encouragement of a new cultural elite resulted in one of the supreme eras in the history of Islamic art - which means this exhibition contains some of the most beautiful things you could ever wish to see.

Islam has always rejoiced in an art of pattern and geometry, but there are many ways of being orderly. What Persian artists added to tradition in the reign of Shah Abbas was a taste for the specific, for the portrayal of nature, not in tension with the abstract legacy but enriching it. The new ruler let a thousand flowers bloom...