Conversation with an Angel

An angel in the guise of a young maiden and a youth in a white turban sit side by side on a patterned carpet, bent over a single open manuscript — the hands of both rest on its pages, their gazes turned toward each other. Behind them is a pomegranate tree, densely strewn with fruit; on a low tray before them are apples, peaches, a pomegranate. Three months were spent bringing out with a single-hair brush every cluster of fruit and every petal of this garden. The garden here is not a backdrop for the meeting but its confirmation. That which is promised in the word of the manuscript already blossoms and bears fruit all around: the garden in which the conversation with the messenger takes place itself becomes a sign that the message is not empty. The apple on the tray echoes the language of the Persian ghazal, where the 'apple of the chin' is an enduring image of the beauty of a face turned toward one's interlocutor; here this same fruit finds itself beside the face of the youth listening to the angel. The manuscript that the two hold together is an image of the message that does not fall ready-made into the hands but is shared at the moment of transmission between the one who bears the word and the one who receives it. About the work The miniature is executed in the tradition of the court book painting of Maverannahr of the 16th–17th centuries, where scenes of the appearance of an angel or a spiritual mentor were an enduring subject of illuminated manuscripts. The dense, planar composition, the golden-ochre ornamental field along the edge of the sheet, and the conventional garden in the background are characteristic of the Bukhara school of this period. The motif of the meeting with a messenger echoes the imagery of Sufi poetry, where the garden often serves as a metaphor for the space in which truth is revealed to the soul. Details Base: Natural handmade Bukhara silk paper (90% silk, 10% cotton) Technique: Tempera, watercolour, natural plant and mineral pigments, gold leaf (23 carat) Unique piece