The Spring of Love

Beneath a flowering tree, close to the trunk, stands a maiden in a dark patterned dress over a green one, a light veil falling from her head. She is that Beauty around which all else has grown still. On the left a youth in blue has sunk to one knee. In one hand he holds a cup filled to the brim; with the other he barely touches the hem of her dress — not daring to embrace her, not daring to speak, only to hold the hem so that she will not go. In this cautious touch of the cloth is all of love at once: both the humility of one who asks for nothing more, and the boldness of one who has nonetheless dared to touch. And the cup in his hand is filled level with the brim and about to overflow — like a heart that can no longer hold what it carries. On the right stands another — a youth in grey, turned away, his gaze lowered, leaning upon his support. He too loves, but his lot is different: to see Beauty and not draw near. He is the ashiq, the lover from afar, whose love has passed wholly into longing — into that sweet pain which seeks no answer and lives by contemplation alone. Thus in a single garden two measures of feeling have met: the hand that holds the hem, and the eyes that do not dare to lift. Below, beyond a narrow ribbon of water, another life goes on in its own course: a white horse under a green caparison, a youth with a blade at his belt, a third offering a cup. They are about their own business and do not raise their eyes to the tree — as though the spring of love were poured out only there, above, while here an ordinary day flows on. This scene took the master five months of work with a brush of a single hair. And above them all the tree has opened into blossom — a white-and-pink cloud upon the green of the foliage. It explains nothing and points to nothing; it simply blooms above the lovers, as every spring blooms above those who love — briefly and with all its might. About the work The leaf belongs to the tradition of Bukhara book miniature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, heir to the courtly art of Maverannahr with its gilded and azure grounds, its finely drawn flowering garden and its cloud-bands in the Far Eastern taste. The scene of love in a garden is one of the enduring motifs of Persian-Central Asian painting, in which earthly feeling is read as a stage toward, and an image of, a higher love: ishq majazi leading to ishq haqiqi. The composition, divided by the flow of water into two planes, follows the long-standing tradition of a multi-tiered construction, in which the near, everyday world is set against the world of the heart's contemplation. Here the language of flowers, poses and gestures matters more than the story: each figure is a shade of one great feeling. 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