Reclining Figure

Reclining Figure

Arms draped over a brocaded cushion, torso twisted toward the viewer, and knees bent, this individual has traditionally been identified as a woman.[1] Certainly the leggings with a decorative border were standard, though fancy, undergarments of Safavid women. However, the long, floppy cap, usually combined with a turban, is of a type favored by men in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The pose recalls that found in two works by Riza-yi ‘Abbasi: one, a drawing of a sleeping woman based on an engraving after Raphael by Marcantonio Raimondi, and the other, a painting of a seminude sleeping woman adapted from that drawing.[2] While sleeping figures were not new to Persian painting, the depiction of a mostly nude reclining woman removed from any narrative context was highly novel in the 1590s and resulted in a spate of similar works produced for inclusion in albums by artists other than Riza.[3]

The clues to the identity of this figure may be found in European descriptions of Georgian, Circassian, and Armenian youths who "dressed effeminately" and performed "immodest" dances intended to arouse the "libidinous desires" of the clientele of coffeehouses.[4] Although he traveled at a later date to Iran, between 1666 and 1677, Jean Chardin described the environment of coffeehouses during the reigns of Shah ‘Abbas I and Shah Safi, noting that the boy dancers ranged from ten to sixteen years old, wore their hair in a feminine manner, and were essentially male prostitutes for coffeehouse customers.[5] The beardless face, feminine underwear and hair, and alluring pose of this figure suggest that he is one of the "coffee youngsters" who caught the eye, or inflamed the passions, of the anonymous patron of the drawing. If the artist had drawn a woman in this seductive pose, he would most likely have emphasized her breasts and portrayed her either partly nude or showing her navel. Here, the figure is fully clothed, and his arm covers his breasts. Despite his full thighs and long hair, the figure is sexually ambiguous and fits the descriptions by Europeans who observed such personages in the coffeehouses of Isfahan in the 1620s and 1630s. In the mid-1640s under Shah ‘Abbas II, the coffeehouses were reformed and the lewd practices of previous decades were banned.

Sheila R. Canby in [Ekhtiar, Soucek, Canby, and Haidar 2011]

Footnotes:

1. Swietochowski and Babaie 1989, p. 50, no. 20.

2. Canby 1996, p. 28, no. 8, fig. 1, and p. 31, no. 7.

3. Several of these are in albums in the Topkapı Palace Library (for example, no. H2155, fols. 23b, 24a, and no. H2158, fol. 27b); all of them depict men instead of women.

4. Matthee, Rudi. "Coffee in Safavid Iran: Commerce and Consumption." Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 37, no. 1 (1994), pp. 1–32, esp. pp. 26–27.

5. Chardin, as quoted in ibid., p. 27.


Reclining Woman

The motif of the reclining female figure became increasingly popular in Persian art from the middle of the sixteenth century onward. Often portrayed nude or seminude, in a languid resting pose, or asleep with one or both arms supporting the head and shoulders, these representations generally strike the viewer as erotic and sensual in intent. The eroticism of these reclining figures, expressed naturally by nakedness (itself a rare subject in the arts from the Islamic world) and the inherent sensuality of the pose, also seem to reflect visual familiarity with the Venetian type of reclining female figure, such as Giorgione's Sleeping Venus and Titian's Venus of Urbino.[1] Specific features of the pose, however, were already part of the Persian artists' repertory well before the sixteenth century. The head propped on one arm, the other reaching over the torso resting on a pillow, and one leg folded over the other are found in sleeping or reclining figures in manuscript painting as early as the fourteenth century.[2] Most striking in this drawing is the pose itself. At first glance, the young woman is yet another of the Venus look-alikes of the later sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. But the twist of the body pivoting at the waist so that the upper body turns in the direction of the viewer while the legs turn away invests the figure with a wholly new sensation of movement and vitality.

As if punctuating the torsion of the body, the sash too is knotted at the center and its loose ends flow in opposing directions. From this vivid movement of the body, the eye comes to rest on the tranquil position of the head and the dreamlike expression of the perfect oval of the face. All of this part of the drawing assumes an amusing quality. The right hand is situated between two rabbits from the pattern of the pillowcase in such a way that it looks as if the rabbits are playing with her fingers. The mass of hair parted in the middle to look like wings is pulled back to the side of her head and is drawn with the utmost care given to every single hair. An anomalous patterned shape projects behind the hair. Other elements of the composition, the landscape motifs and the bottle and cup, are familiar from outdoor scenes.

The dating of these reclining figures poses certain problems. A number of them are the product of the surge in single-figure representations that took place in the middle of the seventeenth century and share the stylistic and iconographic preferences of painting and drawing in Isfahan at this time. The Museum's drawing, on the other hand, belongs to a group which is generally dated to the sixteenth century. These are the Reclining Nude in the Freer Gallery of Art (54.24),and A Reclining Nude from the Album of the Emir of Bukhara at the Pierpont Morgan Library (M.386.5), among others. Nearly all of these reclining figures are paintings.

[Swietochowski and Babaie 1989]

Footnotes:

1. See illustrations of Khosrow observing Shirin and Eskandar observing the Sirens for the examples of the female nude. Farhad, in discussing the popularity of the pose in the mid-17th century, emphasizes the European influence at the expense of the Persian precedence and cites only one Persian forerunner, a Reza 'Abbasi Sleeping Girl; see Farhad, Massumeh. "Safavid Single-Page Painting, 1629–1666." Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1987, pp. 227–30 and fig. 2.

2. See Darab Sleeping in the Vault from the "Demotte" Shah-nameh, in Grabar, Oleg, and Sheila Blair, Epic Images and Contemporary History: The Illustrations of the Great Mongol Shahnama. Chicago and London, 1980, fig. 26; see also Tahmineh in Rustam's Chamber, from an early-15th-century Shah-nameh, in Simpson, Marianna Shreve. Arab and Persian Painting in the Fogg Art Museum. Cambridge, Massachusetts, no. 8; and Khosrow and Shirin United from a 15th-century Khamseh of Nezami at the Metropolitan Museum (13.228.3), folio l04a.


























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[ E. Kalebdjian, New York, until 1912; sold to MMA]

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Persian Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 13–December 31, 1989, no. 20.

Swietochowski, Marie, and Sussan Babaie. Persian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989. no. 20, pp. 50–51, ill. pl. 20 (b/w).

Canby, Sheila R. "The Drawings and Paintings of Riza-Yi Abbasi of Isfahan." In The Rebellious Reformer . London: Azimuth Editions, 1996. ill. p. 28, no. 8, fig. 1, p. 31, no. 7.

Davidson, Olga, and Marianna Shreve Simpson, ed. "Seven Essays." In The Arts of Iran in Istanbul and Anatolia. Boston, 2018. p. 75, ill. fig. 17 (b/w).

Ekhtiar, Maryam, Priscilla P. Soucek, Sheila R. Canby, and Navina Haidar, ed. Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1st ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011. no. 152, pp. 173, 225–26, ill. p. 225 (color).