Lovers' Picnic, painting (recto), text (verso), illustrated folio from a manuscript of the Divan (Collected Works) of Hafiz

Artists

Description

This well-known painting features a pair of courtly lovers in a spring garden. Holding hands, they are seated on a carpet, shaded by a canopy bearing an exuberant arabesque. A wine bearer offers the young man a golden bowl; musicians and dancers perform in the foreground on the banks of a stream bordered by flowers. The painting appears on what was once folio 66 recto of a famous manuscript of the Divan of Hafiz and illustrates the 229th ghazal of Hafiz (P. Loloi, Hafiz Master of Persian Poetry, A critical Poetry, New York, 2004, p.149). Only the first line of the poem is shown on the illustrated page and the rest of the poem can be found on the verso side. Because the name of Sam Mirza (b. 1517), brother to the Safavid ruler Shah Tahmasp, appears on one of the now dispersed paintings, it is posited that the prince was the patron of the manuscript.

Dimensions

19 x 12.4 cm (7 1/2 x 4 7/8 in.)

Provenance

Arthur Sambon, Paris (by 1912). Louis Cartier Collection, Paris, (by 1931-1958), sold; to Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Cary Welch, Jr., Warner, NH, (1958-2007), gift; to the Harvard University Art Museums.