AN ILLUSTRATED FOLIO FROM A PERSIAN EPIC, POSSIBLY FERDOWSI'S SHAHNAMEH
Late Safavid Iran, ca. 1690 - 1720

Opaque pigments and ink heightened with gold on wove paper, the vertical-format composition depicting a crowded audience scene at the court of a demonic king, possibly Zahhak, an evil figure in Persian mythology who used to be a young prince seduced by the devil and transformed into an all-powerful tyrant with two insatiable snakes growing from his shoulders, in front of him a tray with two decapitated heads, the scene livened by the king's demonic attendants with grotesque faces and bodies, wild animals in the foreground, and a timid soldier clad in a Safavid armorial outfit in the lower right corner, set within black and blue rules, and pasted onto concentric decorative album borders in red and off-white speckled with gold, mounted, glazed, and framed, the folio 32cm x 22cm, 37.5cm x 30cm including the frame.