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Identification and Creation

Object Number
2007.183.2
People
Attributed to Sultan Muhammad, Persian (16th century)
Title
Lovers' Picnic, painting (recto), text (verso), illustrated folio from a manuscript of the Divan (Collected Works) of Hafiz
Classification
Manuscripts
Work Type
manuscript folio
Date
c. 1530
Places
Creation Place: Middle East, Iran, Tabriz
Period
Safavid period
Culture
Persian
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/320989

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper
Dimensions
19 x 12.4 cm (7 1/2 x 4 7/8 in.)
Inscriptions and Marks
  • Signed: A couplet by Hafiz is written in the text blocks at the upper edge of the painting. It has been translated by Martin B. Dickson to read: "A rose without the glow of a lover bears no joy; Without wine to drink, the spring brings no joy."
  • inscription: In the text blocks at the upper edge of the painting (translated by Martin B. Dickson): "A rose without the glow of a lover bears no joy; / Without wine to drink, the spring brings no joy."

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Arthur Sambon, Paris (by 1912). Louis Cartier Collection, Paris, (by 1931-1958), sold; to Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Cary Welch, Jr., Warner, NH, (1958-2007), gift; to the Harvard University Art Museums.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Stuart Cary Welch in honor of Edith Iselin Gilbert Welch
Accession Year
2007
Object Number
2007.183.2
Division
Asian and Mediterranean Art
Contact
am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Descriptions

Description
This well-known painting features a pair of courtly lovers in a spring garden. Holding hands, they are seated on a carpet, shaded by a canopy bearing an exuberant arabesque. A wine bearer offers the young man a golden bowl; musicians and dancers perform in the foreground on the banks of a stream bordered by flowers. The painting appears on what was once folio 66 recto of a famous manuscript of the Divan of Hafiz and illustrates the 229th ghazal of Hafiz (P. Loloi, Hafiz Master of Persian Poetry, A critical Poetry, New York, 2004, p.149). Only the first line of the poem is shown on the illustrated page and the rest of the poem can be found on the verso side. Because the name of Sam Mirza (b. 1517), brother to the Safavid ruler Shah Tahmasp, appears on one of the now dispersed paintings, it is posited that the prince was the patron of the manuscript.

Publication History

  • Armenag Sakisian, La Miniature Persane du XIIe au XVIIe Siecle, Les Editions G. van Oest (Paris, France, 1929), pp. 113, pl. LXXXI, fig. 146
  • Laurence Binyon and J. V. S. Wilkinson, Persian Miniature Painting: Including a Critical and Descriptive Catalogue of the Miniatures Exhibited at Burlington House, January-March, 1931, exh. cat., Oxford University Press (NY) and Oxford University Press (UK) (London, England, 1933), pp. 112, 115, 116, 128-9:illus. Pl. LXXXIII A, no. 127
  • Ivan Stchoukine, Les peintures des manuscrits safavis 1502-1587, P. Guenther (Paris, 1959), pp. 60-61
  • Basil Gray, La Peinture Persane, Skira (Geneve, 1961), pp. 130, 136, 137
  • Stuart Cary Welch, Persian Painting: Five Royal Safavid Manuscripts of the Sixteenth Century, George Braziller (New York, 1976), p. 117
  • Stuart Cary Welch, Wonders of the Age: Masterpieces of Early Safavid Painting, 1501-1576, exh. cat., Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA, 1979), pp. 122-23
  • Martin Bernard Dickson and Stuart Cary Welch, The Houghton Shahnameh, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA, 1981), pp.37-39, 58
  • Elizabeth Murray, Cultivating Sacred Space: Gardening for the Soul, Pomegranate (San Francisco, 1997), page 22
  • Priscilla Soucek, Interpreting the Ghazals of Hafiz, RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology (Cambridge, MA, Spring, 2003), No. 43, Islamic Arts, p. 159, fig. 6
  • Harvard Art Museum, Harvard Art Museum Annual Report, ed. Thomas W. Lentz (Cambridge, 2007-2008), p. 34
  • Farid al-Din Attar, Layli Anvar, and Michael Barry, Le Cantique des Oiseaux: illustré par la peinture en Islam d’orient, Diane de Selliers (Paris, 2012), p. 278, ill. p. 279.
  • Tina Marie Theresa D'Alessandro Powell, Picnic in Pisticci, Big Fat Pen Publishing, Inc. (Canada, 2012), p. 39, ill.; p. 98
  • Robert Hillenbrand and Firuza Abdullaeva, ed., Ferdowsi, the Mongols and the History of Iran: Art, Literature and Culture from Early Islam to Qajar Persia. Studies in Honor of Charles Melville., I. B. Tauris (London, 2013), p. 338; plate 27
  • Cartier and Islamic Art: In Search of Modernity (London, Thames & Hudson, 2021)., p. 82, ill.; pp. 293-294, no. 4c

Exhibition History

  • 32Q: 2550 Islamic, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 05/14/2015
  • 32Q: 3620 University Study Gallery, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 08/31/2019 - 01/08/2020
  • Cartier and Islamic Art: In Search of Modernity, Musée des Arts Decoratifs, 10/21/2021 - 02/20/2022

Subjects and Contexts

  • Google Art Project

Related Works

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art at am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu