Monday, October 30, 2006 | Permalink
A few months ago, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary mounted a spectacular exhibition on Persian manuscript painting. Fortunately, digital facsimiles of the miniatures and folios are still available online.
Here are some of my favorites, starting with this twice-walled Edenic garden floating amidst an orange vegetal sea.
And here are some weirdly kinetic fortification walls.
The swirling vortex of extruded geology. The stage for a battle scene or a weaponized terrestrial tsunami?
One wonders if 16th century Persian painters understood the physics of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, since they undoubtedly display a mastery of the multi-temporal and the multi-spatial in this miniature.
And one wonders, too, if they also understood tectonics as the following two miniatures obviously portray the billion-year process of mountain making.
This, of the ascension of Prophet Mohammad, is beyond compare.
This is absolutely beautiful!
And this!
And this!
In fact, all are mind-bogglingly gorgeous!
Although this last folio depicts an ascetic man in self-exile inside an arboreal cave, it nevertheless reminds me of one of the more erotic poems by Foroogh Farrokhzaad, Iran's greatest 20th century poet. Below in full is a translation by David Martin of the poem.
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
Book of the Hunt by Gaston Phoebus
Here are some of my favorites, starting with this twice-walled Edenic garden floating amidst an orange vegetal sea.
And here are some weirdly kinetic fortification walls.
The swirling vortex of extruded geology. The stage for a battle scene or a weaponized terrestrial tsunami?
One wonders if 16th century Persian painters understood the physics of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, since they undoubtedly display a mastery of the multi-temporal and the multi-spatial in this miniature.
And one wonders, too, if they also understood tectonics as the following two miniatures obviously portray the billion-year process of mountain making.
This, of the ascension of Prophet Mohammad, is beyond compare.
This is absolutely beautiful!
And this!
And this!
In fact, all are mind-bogglingly gorgeous!
Although this last folio depicts an ascetic man in self-exile inside an arboreal cave, it nevertheless reminds me of one of the more erotic poems by Foroogh Farrokhzaad, Iran's greatest 20th century poet. Below in full is a translation by David Martin of the poem.
in my small night, what mounting
regret!
wind has a rendezvous with the trees'
leaves
in my small night, there is terror
of desolation
listen! do you hear
the wind of darkness howling?
I watch breathless
-ly and wondrously this alien happiness
I am addicted to my own hopelessness
listen! listen well!
can you hear the darkness
howling? -- the dark hell
-wind scything
its way towards us?
in the night now, there is something
passing
the moon is red restless and uneasy
and on this roof -- which fears
any moment
-- it may cave in --
clouds like crowds of mourners
await to break in rain
ruin
a moment
and then after that, nothing.
behind this window, night shivers
and the earth stands still
behind this window an unknown
something fears for me and you
O you who are green from head to toe!
put your hands
-- like a burning
memory into my loving hands --
lover's hands!
entrust your lips -- your lips
like a warm sense of being! --
entrust! -- your lips to the caresses of my
-- loving lips -- lover's lips!
the wind will carry us with it
the wind will carry us with it
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
Book of the Hunt by Gaston Phoebus
awesome.
I like the miniatures of islamic very much,but in china there haven't material about this .And i want to know that all this picture have you make over it's contrast ?
Thank you for sharing with us.
Murad from Skikda, Algeria.
These are intricate and beautiful images.
Much appreciated.
Angela
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