Object Description
of deep rounded form with slightly everted rim on a splayed foot, decorated overglaze in polychrome on a cream ground with Bahram Gur and Azada seated on a camel, Azada holding a harp, Bahram Gur a bow, a winged mythical creature to the left, a holy man to the right, the rim with a series of panels containing vegetal interlace, the exterior with a band of pseudo-inscription.
21.5 cm. diam.
Provenance
Private Japanese Collection, acquired circa 1975.
The bowl depicts a scene from the Shahnamah in which Bahram Gur is challenged by his concubine Azada to demonstrate his skill with a bow and arrow. This popular episode was depicted on both ceramics and metalware. A similar Minai bowl in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, depicts the same scene and is the most closely comparable example to the present lot (57.36.2). Another is in the Brooklyn Museum (86.227.11). The present lot is unusual for the inclusion of the onlooker, possibly Monzer, Bahram Gur’s protector who is mentioned in the previous chapter and who provided the young prince with two noble Byzantine slave girls. In the subsequent episode, Azada pities the slain creature and reproaches him for his cruelty, dismissing his hunting prowess. In anger at her rejection, he throws her from the camel, where she is trampled underfoot.
This is also a popular story in Minai ceramics, and the aforementioned bowl in the Metropolitan Museum represents the two scenes at once, showing Azada both on the camel and beneath it. For a bowl in a private collection depicting the subject, see B. Brend, C. Melville, Epic of the Persian Kings: the Art of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, Cambridge 2010, p. 83, no. 16.
The Minai technique, also known as the ‘seven colours’ technique, emerged in Iran in the 12th Century and was accompanied by a revolutionary development that enabled potters to paint more complex and polychromatic designs. Not all the pigments were applied at the same point, making the process a long and difficult one. This probably explains the short life of the technique, known to have been employed from the last quarter of the 12th Century to the first decades of the 13th Century. Gilding, present on the horses saddle, was applied last to enrich the object. The Minai ceramics which illustrate stories from the Shahnamah, such as the present lot, predate its earliest surviving illustrated manuscript by nearly a century.