The Tryst

Beneath a flowering tree, which here marks not the turning of the seasons but the very threshold of the meeting, stand two figures: a youth in a lilac cloak gently holds his beloved by the hand, and she answers only with a shy movement — her palm raised to her breast, her gaze lowered, and in this gesture more is said than in any embrace. 'Visal' — that blessed instant of the merging of souls after separation, with which Persian lyric poetry is filled — is here not named, but suffused through everything: in the touch of fingers, in the inclining of the heads towards one another, in the very stillness of the scene. A little lower down the slope, at the bend of a stream, stand two horses — one black, one bay — and they too reach towards each other with their muzzles, almost touching: the tenderness of the people is mirrored in the animal world as well, as though nature itself knew the same feeling. Behind — a bare hill scorched by the sun, with sparse dry trees, the world before love. But at the feet of the lovers — already another earth: dense emerald green, bright spring flowers, a babbling stream running off in every direction. One and the same soil is shown here twice — as desert and as garden — as though love itself were the very force that turns the one into the other. Four months went into tracing out every petal of the tree and every thread of water that winds around this garden. About the work The miniature continues the tradition of the lyrical scene of lovers' meeting, long beloved in the painting of Maverannahr of the 16th–17th centuries and echoing in mood the poems of Navoi and Nizami, though it does not illustrate any specific text. The spare composition — just two figures and a pair of horses — is characteristic of intimate leaves, where all the power of the image rests not on a multitude of figures but on the stillness of gesture. The wide passe-partout is executed in the ebru marbled-paper technique, with pistachio-green, terracotta and ochre swirls framing the restrained harmony of the scene. The miniature was created by the master Davlat Toshev, for whom a simple meeting beneath a flowering tree becomes an occasion to speak of the most intimate things. 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