Sunday, January 23, 2011

Because I am Persian...

Well, HALF Persian... I am interested Persian culture and almost anything Persian. Because of that, I REALLY want to find a good Persian miniature painting I can use for my tableau vivant. So far, I'm not really confident about all of the things I've found, but I think that my IDEAL choice for the art piece I will work off may be this one.
There are about a million different ways I've seen this painting titled, but the one I'll stick with is "Khosrow Discovers Shirin Bathing In A Pool."

Khosrow and Shirin are characters from a Persian epic poem known as Shahnameh, written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi. The Shahnameh tells the mythical and historical past of Iran from the creation of the world until the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century.

This illustration, however, is from Nizami Ganjavi's poems. He took characters from Shahnameh and wanted to focus on the more romantic aspects of the story, as opposed to the historical aspects. This story is apparently somewhat of a classic love story, about Khosrow and Shirin, along with Khosrow's rival for Shirin's love, Farhad.

I plan on reading any summaries and translations of their story that I can find. From what little I know, this story sounds really interesting and I guess I'm a bit of a loser, but love triangles, if done correctly, are great parts of a story. I look forward to researching this a little more.

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