"Isfandiyar's Second Course: He Slays the Lions", Folio from a Shahnama (Book of Kings)

Isfandiyar's Second Course: He Slays the Lions

Isfandiyar, like Rustam, had to pass succesfully through seven dangerous courses before completing a rescue mission. The second consisted of an encounter with a pair of dangerous lions. The artist has chosen the moment in the story when the first lion has been dispatched with the blow of a sword that cut it from head to midriff, although the illustration shows a thrust of the midrif alone. Isfandiyar has yet to kill the lioness, although the painter seems to have reversed the order of the attacking beasts. In any case, the animals are both naturalistically and sympathetically drawn.

Isfandiyar's Second Course is illustrated in the Freer Small Shahnama, but that miniature has not been published.[1] It is also illustrated in the 1330 Inju'id Shahnama in Istanbul where, against a red ground, Isfandiyar, followed by his mounted troops, has killed one lion, spread out like a rug in the upper left, and is applying his sword to the second one at the lower left. The lions look rather small and insignificant and are not as believable as those in the Gutman painting. [2] The spirit of the two miniatures as well as their compositions are totally different.

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. 359 (Freer Gallery of Art, 85).

2. F. Cagman and Z. Tanindi, The Topkapi Sarayi Museum. The Albums and Illustrated Manuscripts. Translated, edited, and expanded by J. M. Rogers, Boston, 1986, no. 37, colorpl.

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. 31.

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

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. 31, pp. 72, 108–9, ill. p. 108 (b/w).