Royal Repose beneath the Pomegranate Tree

The pomegranate tree spreads across the whole golden firmament, and beneath its crown, laden with hundreds of fruits, a whole small world has come to rest. On the carpets sits the sovereign lady in a red-and-blue robe, a tall crown above her headdress; beside her are attendants in yellow and pink, also crowned, and a servant with a white kerchief in his hands. Below, by a winding stony brook, are three men: one with a stringed instrument in his hands, the other two bending toward the water with bowls. The tree binds the two tiers with a single trunk — the feast above and the music below. In the branches are two crested birds: one has built its nest right against the trunk, the other has settled lower. This is the hoopoe — the bird that in the Persian tradition, in Attar, leads the assembly of the feathered ones through the seven valleys to the Simurgh. It leads not because it is wiser than the rest by birth, but because it has already walked its own path: it served as a messenger to Sulayman, flew between the earthly court and hidden knowledge, and thus knows the way not by hearsay. Here it is no guest upon a branch but a dweller of the tree, one that has built a nest — a grace that has settled and lives, rather than one that alighted for a moment. The pomegranate itself, in the Perso-Islamic tradition, is a fruit of the gardens of paradise promised to the righteous, a sign of an abundance that takes root rather than passes by. The tree, wholly covered with fruit, reads not as a chance bounty but as a rooted grace — the kind that stays with a house year after year. The brook below completes the image: water, music and fruit in a single garden — a folded model of paradise, brought down to earth over nine months of labour with a brush finer than a hair. About the work The miniature continues the tradition of the court painting of Maverannahr of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in which the garden feast is a well-established genre depicting the harmony of power, nature and art. The pomegranate tree as the focal point of the composition goes back to the motif of paradisal abundance widespread in Perso-Central Asian painting. The figures of the musicians by the water and the nobility beneath the tree form the classical two-tiered composition of a court gathering. The golden ground and the densely painted margins with plant and animal ornament are a typical mark of this school. The scene is not tied to any particular historical event or person, but conveys an ideal image of royal leisure. 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