Bahram Gur Slays a Dragon, from the Shahnama of Firdausi

Description

In our third and last view of Shah Bahram Gur (see also 1963/1.68, 1963/1.69) , he finally fulfills his royal potential by dispatching a fierce dragon. Here he is shown calmly astride his galloping charger, having just released his bow.
Hasting to the stream he saw
The dragon mid the gloom, its form, its writhing,
And furiousness, fire flashing from its eyes.
He strung his bow, he chose
Shafts dipped in bane of milk, and ’gan to shower them
Down on the dragon, wheeling all the while,
Like horsemen in the fray, to left and right.
The dragon’s body failed
By reason of those shafts, and all the ground
Ran with its gore and bane.
Warner, VII, 125
Notice that Bahram Gur appears quite different in these last three scenes: sometimes he wears a crown, sometimes a turban; sometimes he is bearded, while at others he has only a mustache. Assuming that there was a single “editor” for the manuscript—a scholar, perhaps, who worked with the patron to determine what scenes would be illustrated—how can we account for these discrepancies? The most logical answer is that several painters were working on the manuscript at the same time, without conferring among themselves. This pattern of production, in fact, typified Persian painting workshops of the fourteenth through eighteenth centuries.
———
Maribeth Graybill, Senior Curator of Asian Art
Exhibited in "A Medieval Masterpiece from Baghdad: the Ann Arbor Shahnama"
August 14 through December 19, 2004