The Gandhara and Mathura school of art developed under the Kushana rulers (1st to 3rd CE) while both started more or less together the Mathura school lasted much longer and flourished under the Gupta dynasty.
The Kushans had two capitals: one at Peshawar and teh other at Mathura.
Gandhara school which developed in areas that are Afghanistan and Pakistan, was the first to make sculptural representation of Buddha and bore Hellenestic influences.
It belonged to the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism.
The characteristics of the Gandhara school were curly hair, anatomical accuracy, spatial depth, and foreshortening. ( Image 2)
In the Mathura school the emphasis was on facial expression and internal beauty. Buddha was modelled on earlier Yaksha images. ( Image 1)
An important point to remember is that Buddha’s iconography doesn’t depict his physical form but his knowledge and spirituality and awareness.
Buddha’s curls called rahotsu are a symbol of his freedom from cares of the world. He chopped off the long hair he had as a prince and it snapped into tight curls which he never had to cut again.
Another version is that his curls are 108 snails which gave up their lives to cover his head so that he does not suffer a heart-stroke while meditating under a scorching sun.
The cranial bump (ushnisha) symbolizes the “expanded wisdom” the Buddha attained at the time of his enlightenment.
The mark in the center of the Buddha’s forehead (urna) refers to his supernatural wisdom.
The Mathura Buddha had a shaved head as can be seen in 1st image. The Gandhara images had longer eyes, shorter ear lobes, and sharper noses.
The eyes of the Mathura school are open while in Gandhara eyes are half closed.
The pleated garments of Gandhara resemble the Greco-Roman robes.
Material was another great marker. While Gandhara school used great stone, Mathura school used spotted red sandstone.
Both these images are in Mathura Museum

The Shahnama is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Firdausi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 50,000 “distichs” or couplets, it is the world’s longest epic poem written by a single poet.

From Gallery Text :

The Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp
The Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp (r. 1524–76), also known as the Shahnama-yi Shahi, is arguably the most luxuriously illustrated copy of Firdausi’s epic ever produced in the history of Persian painting

This project was realized at the royal atelier in Tabriz, the first capital of the Safavid dynasty, and involved two generations of the most renowned artists of the time. Among them were Sultan Muhammad, Mir Musavvir, and Aqa Mirak, who succeeded each other as directors of the project through the years. Scholars still disagree about the actual dates of execution of the manuscript. It was begun around the early 1520s, probably under Shah Isma‘il (r. 1501–24), the founder of the dynasty, and carried out for at least another twenty years under Shah Tahmasp, the manuscript’s dedicatee and principal sponsor.

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/shnm/hd_shnm.htm

From Gallery Text :

Abu’l Qasim Firdausi

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/452111

Gallery Text :

Abu’l Qasim Firdausi

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/452126

Some more folio

“Bahram Gur Pins the Coupling Onagers”, Folio 568r from the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Shah Tahmasp

“The Angel Surush Rescues Khusrau Parviz from a Cul-de-sac”, Folio 708v from the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Shah Tahmasp

Author: Abu’l Qasim Firdausi (935–1020)

Artist: Painting attributed to Muzaffar ‘Ali (active late 1520s–70s; d. ca. 1576)