A COURTLY BANQUET SCENE
PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT EUROPEAN PRIVATE COLLECTION
Safavid Iran, second half 17th century

Opaque pigments and black ink heightened with gold on paper, the square composition depicting a lively intimate banquet scene at court with a ruler and his consort enthroned, holding each other in a tender embrace, surrounded by a crowd of female musicians and attendants, the scene framed within four lines of black ink nasta'liq Persian quatrains quoting a passage on kingly duties from Yusuf o Zuleykha in the Haft Awrang by the Persian poet Jami, placed on each corner further surrounded by concentric decorative borders with polychrome and gold geometric and floral motifs, on the tambourine on the lower-left corner an inscription in a different hand from the main calligraphy reading The Work of Mu'in Musavvir dated Jom'e Rajab 1087 (Thursday night, September or October 1676 AD), mounted, glazed and framed, 37cm x 35.5cm including the frame.