Document Type : Original Article
Author
Islamic Art Dept., Faculty of Art and Architecture, University of Kashan, Kashan
Abstract
The earliest surviving images of the prophets in Persian painting date back to the thirteenth century. This paper, which examines the portraiture of the prophets in the painting of the mid thirteenth century onwards, addresses the question of the distinction between the prophets and other peoples in the paintings. Finding the starting point of depiction of holiness halo and its evolution in Persian painting is also question of great significance. Considering the formal evolution, the visual examples of this epoch of two hundred years have been surveyed in four periods: thirteenth century to the early fourteenth century, form the Rab‘-i Rashidi to the end of the Ilkhanids, Jalayirids, and early Timurids. In the art of the thirteenth to the early fourteenth centuries, according to ancient traditions a disc halo was depicted around the heads of all humans (and sometimes even animals), and thus the prophets have no certain distinction with others. The difference between the Prophet Muhammad and other people in the paintings of this period is only in having two long tresses. It was during this period that, under the influence of Baghdad painting, prophets wear a certain garment called shamal, which later in the paintings of the Jami‘ al-tawarikh became one of the most important features of the portraiture of the prophets.
In the second period, under the influence of Buddhist and Byzantine art, the holiness halo was formed. The earliest known example of the halo of holiness is the image of Moses in the Arabic copy of the Jami‘ al-tawarikh (dated 1314), which is drawn not in a circle but as the rays of the sun. Apparently the establishment of the aura of holiness took place in a copy of the Mi‘rajnama, which was produced for the last Ilkhanid ruler, Sultan Abu Sa‘id Bahadur. The images of the Mi‘rajnama, which were dedicated to the depiction of the heavens, provided an opportunity to enter the golden halo of holiness into the portraiture of the Prophet Muhammad. Although in the paintings of this manuscript the halo of holiness is depicted as a golden cloud around the head or the whole body of the Prophet, in the painting “Muhammad enters the seventh heaven” he has a flaming halo. This work can be considered as the earliest surviving example of drawing a flaming halo for the prophets in Persian painting, which has continued for several centuries. In the paintings of this manuscript, all the prophets have a flaming halo around their heads, but Muhammad, who is “The light of lights”, has a much bigger halo. During the Jalayirid era, a fiery halo, which had been emerged in one of the paintings of the Ilkhanid Mi‘rajnama and was rooted in Buddhist iconography, became prevalent. Finally in the early Timurid art, this fiery halo was followed more seriously and with more elaborate decorations.
Keywords
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