"Caesar Gives his Daughter Katayun to Gushtasp", Folio from a Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Firdausi

Caesar Gives His Daughter Katayun to Gushtasp

It was the custom at the court of Rum, when a princess became of marriageable age, for Caesar to invite to the palace the highest ranking nobles and magnates of the land, as well as the sages and wise men, and to allow his daughter to choose a husband from among them according to her fancy. Katayun had seen Gushtasp in a dream and when she recognized him in the palace she instantly chose him. Caesar, not knowing of Gushtasp's royal lineage, was dismayed and angry, but was persuaded that all would be well if he followed the old tradition and his daughter's choice.

Caesar is pictured on his throne, with one knee drawn up, as seen in the contemporary Great Ilkhanid Shahnama, and with the traditional pair of throne guardians behind him. Katayun, however, dominates the composition, standing in the middle, turned toward a lady-in-waiting, but pointing at the throne. The turbaned figure bowing before Caesar is likely to be a councelor, since an aristocrat would not be dressed thus. A guardian within an arched doorway at the left seems to be taking in the scene.

The artist has succesfully combined traditional iconography, the enthroned ruler and the man in the doorway, with his own original interpretation of the text, Katayun indicating her freedom of choice. This artist was perceptive in his interpretation of the epic poem, while another was quite cavalier about it (see, for example, no 1974.290.19). The episode is illustrated in the Second Small Shahnama, but the miniature has not been published.[1]

Mary Lukens Swietochowski in [Swietochowski and Carboni 1994]

Notes:

1. M. S. Simpson. The Illustration of an Epic: The Earliest Shahnama Manuscripts. New York, 1979, p. 379 (Cincinatti, 1974.499r).

Ph. Walter Schulz, Leipzig, Germany (by 1914); Professor O. Moll, Düsseldorf, Germany ; Monroe C. Gutman, New York (by 1929–d. 1974; bequeathed to MMA)

New York. The Hagop Kevorkian Special Exhibitions Gallery, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Illustrated Poetry and Epic Images: Persian Painting of the 1330s and 1340s," February 1–May 1, 1994, no. 28.

Schulz, Ph. Walter. Die Persisch-Islamische Miniaturmalerei. Vol. vols. I, II. Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1914. vol. 1, pp. 74–75, ill. vol. 2, pl. 16.

Harari, Ralph, and Richard Ettinghausen. A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present, edited by Arthur Upham Pope. vol. I–VI. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1938. ill. vol. V, pl. 832A (b/w).

Masuya, Tomoko. "The Condition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Small Shahnama and the Reconstruction of its Text." In Poetry and Epic Images, edited by Marie Lukens Swietochowski, and Stefano Carboni. New York, 1994. pp. 129–45.

Swietochowski, Marie, Stefano Carboni, Tomoko Masuya, and Alexander H. Morton. Illustrated Poetry and Epic Images : Persian Painting of the 1330s and 1340s. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994. no. 28, pp. 69–70, 78–79, 104–5, ill. p. 105 (color).

Sims, Eleanor, B. Marshak, and Ernst J. Grube. "Persian Painting and its Sources." In Peerless Images. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002. no. 125, p. 214, ill. (color).