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拍品專文
This fascinating manuscript of Rumi's Mathnawi Ma'nawi, executed on an unusually large format, is accompanied by six ink paintings after the celebrated Safavid litterateur and painter Sadiqi Beg (d.1610), who was the author of two texts of pivotal importance to our understanding of Safavid painting, the Majma' al-Khawass ('Concours of the Elite') and Qanun al-Suwar ('Canon of Painting'). In the latter, which constitutes a manual of painting in verse, Sadiqi Beg instructs and advises the aspirant painter (Martin Bernard Dickson and Stuart Cary Welch, The Houghton Shahnama, vol. 1, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982, p. 259).
With some degree of irony, Sadiqi Beg specifically warns the aspiring painter against taking the work of their lauded predecessors as models for the painting of human figures, writing that "if [figural painting] is your intent, then Mother Nature alone must serve as your guide. In this particular genre, only a fool would think to parody the works of the past great masters" (op.cit., p.264). On the other hand, "if your aim in figural painting is that of animal-design, then you must leap off your high-flying hobbyhorse and come down to earth. [...] There is no swerving here from the principles established by the masters of old; here artful imitation (tatabbu') is the way that must be pursued" (op.cit., p.264).
Artful imitation has certainly been pursued in the six paintings in the present manuscript, which capture all of the fine brushwork and sensitivity that characterize Sadiqi Beg's work. If the paintings were copied at the same time as the manuscript, their execution took place thirty-five years after the death of Sadiqi Beg and may even be the work of one of his own students. The original of the first painting, depicting a seated man, is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (acc.no.14.636), and is signed Sadiqi Beg (P.W. Schulz, Die Persisch-Islamische Miniaturmalerei, Leipzig, 1914, pl. 148). The original of another painting, depicting a dragon and rider, is in the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (acc.no. AKM105), and is attributed to Sadiqi Beg.