The Women's Feast

In a blossoming garden, women alone have gathered. Some sit among the grasses, some bend toward a flower, some stand apart in little groups — and by their lively gestures one sees how they converse, point something out to one another, share what is innermost. At the centre an apricot tree blossoms, a squirrel frozen on a branch; to the right a cypress rises in one severe vertical. A brook winds along. And in the golden sky a hoopoe flies. This gathering only seems a simple springtime celebration. Look closely — and earthly joys begin to shine through with another light. A maiden in pale blue holds a vessel of wine; on the left another, with a vessel just the same, holds out a bowl to the one seated with a flower in one hand and a kerchief in the other — a gesture of offering from soul to soul, a hospitality in which the cup means more than the drink. Below are two women musicians: one draws a bow across a ghijak, the other beats a doira. Their music is sama itself, the ancient path by which rhythm and melody lead the heart beyond reason, toward that intoxication which is no longer of wine. On a tray pomegranates glow red — the bounty of the opened table of being, the abundance with which the garden gifts those who have come. And over all this soars the hoopoe — the Hudhud, the herald from the Conversation of the Birds, the one that leads the winged flock through the valleys to the hidden Truth. It turns the maidens' feast into a gathering of souls: all this blossoming joy has an unseen aim, a road higher than itself. The cypress points upward, the music draws the heart aloft, and the guide-bird already shows the way. This work took six months. About the work The work continues the tradition of the Bukhara miniature of the 16th–17th centuries with its inheritance from the Herat circle: a multi-figure garden scene, dense colouring, the finest working of blossoming branches, grasses and fabrics, a gilded sky. The motif of a gathering in a garden is one of the enduring ones in Persian-Turkic book painting, where feast and music invariably allowed a second, mystical reading. Here it rests upon the image of the Hudhud — the guide-bird from Attar's poem the Conversation of the Birds, leading souls to the Truth — and upon the Sufi understanding of sama as the path of the heart to ecstasy. Garden, wine, music and fruit come together into a single image of a gathering of souls, over which the sign of the path is raised. The fineness of the brushwork with which every figure and every flower is rendered answers to the high taste of the court school. 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