Folio from a Khamsa (Quintet) by Nizami (d. 1209); Couple with attendants; verso: text: Chapter thirty-one: discrediting overindulgence in eating, part from Khusraw va Shirin

Detached folio from a dispersed copy of a Khamsa (Quintet) by Nizami; text: Persian in black nasta'liq script; recto: illustration: Couple with attendants, empty panel in the upper right; verso: text: Chapter thirty-one: discrediting overindulgence in eating, part from Khusraw va Shirin, 2 columns, 15 lines.

Border: The painting is set in gold, blue, and black rulings on an illuminated, deep-blue paper with marginal medallions and cartouches. The text is set in blue rulings with gold floral scroll inner frame on an illuminated, deep-blue paper with marginal medallions and cartouches.

From the Khamsa of Nizami. This single page comes from a dispersed copy of Nizami's Khamsa, or quintet, a classical Persian text fequently illustrated in the Safavid period. The scribe's name, along with the date and place he completed the text's transcription, is found in the still-extant colophon. Although the iconography of Khamsa illustrations has been established well before the Safavid era, this charming painting of two lovers and musicians in a garden does not seem to refer to any specific Khamsa episode. It may well be that the painting was added after 1513, either in Herat or in Bukhara, a city whose painters closely followed the Herat styles. The empty panel in the upper right, presumably reserved for a verse or a heading, also suggests that the manuscript was never entirely finished.

Freer Gallery of Art Collection

Art of the Court of Shah Tahmasp (December 16, 1979 to August 14, 1980)

Near Eastern Art—Paintings, Pottery (August 18, 1967 to February 10, 1972)