SAFAVID IRAN, EARLY 17TH CENTURY

Details

THE SERPENT BEARER CONSTELLATION (AL-HAWWA)
SAFAVID IRAN, EARLY 17TH CENTURY
Opaque pigments heightened with gold and silver on paper, faded annotations in black and red ink, the painting breaking through gold and black inner rules and within gold and black outer rules, set within gold-sprinkled margins, the verso plain, mounted, framed and glazed
Painting 9 ½ x 5 ¾in. (24 x 14.5cm.); folio 10 ½ x 6 ¾in. (26.8 x 17.2cm.)

Provenance

New York by 1971

Engraved

At the top, surat-i havva’ u haya chunanchih … asman mi-namayad, ‘Image of the serpent carrier and the serpent as it appears [in] the sky’
Faintly written at the bottom, jadval-i kavakib-i surat-i havva’, ‘Index of the stars of the image of al-Hawwa’

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Lot Essay

The constellation of al-hawwa, the serpent bearer, is also known as Ophiuchus. Around the serpent bearer is the snake, al-hayyah or Serpentis. Inscriptions in the body of the painting identify some of the stars including the neck of the serpent ('unq al-haya) and the beginning of the Northern Line (al-nasaq al-shami). This constellation is illustrated in the kitab suwar al-kawakib al-thabita of al-Sufi in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (acc. no. 13.160.10, page 99).

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