By the sixteenth century, a tradition existed in Iran for depicting royal horses either with or without their grooms for inclusion in albums. That these are prized horses is not only demonstrated by the fact that they have been singled out as the subject of a painting but because they are generally covered, as here, by decorative blankets and other elegant fittings. In addition, the well-dressed little groom in the painting, ascribed in gold nasta‘liq to ‘Abd al-Samad, who produced several other works on the same theme, wears the distinctive headdress associated with the early Safavid dynasty. On the reverse are two calligraphies, one in white nasta‘liq signed by Sultan Muhammad Khandan and Hashim Mudhahhib (the gilder).
As proposed by David Roxburgh, this painting along with several others, was once affixed to a page in an album compiled for Bahram Mirza (1517-49), brother of Shah Tahmasp (r. 1524-76), by the calligrapher Dust Muhammad in 951/1544-45. Some pages from the Bahram Mirza Album, in the Topkapi Palace Library, were removed and disassembled in the early 20th century.

• Komaroff, Linda. Gifts of the Sultan: the Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2011.
• Phillip, Filiz Çakir. Enchanted Lines: Drawings from the Aga Khan Museum Collection. Toronto: Aga Khan Museum, 2014.
• Roxburgh, David. "Disorderly Conduct?: F.R. Martin and the Bahram Mirza Album." Muqarnas 15 (1998): 32-57.
• Overton, Keelan. "A History of Ottoman Art History Through the Private Database of Edward Binney, 3rd." Journal of Art Historiography 6 (2012): 1-19.