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Your galleryKing Anushirwan and the Owls
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Find the two owls on the crumbling pink wall left of center, then the snake sliding out of a crack below them and the lizards climbing the rocks beyond.
Nizami, a Persian poet of the late 1100s and early 1200s, opened his Khamsa, or Quintet, with the Treasury of Mysteries, a book of moral talks on justice and rule. In one of its most often painted tales, the Sasanian king Anushirwan rides with his adviser into a ruined village and hears two owls. One asks for ruined villages as a bride-price; the other replies that if the king’s rule does not change, he can soon give a hundred thousand of them. This page was painted at Tabriz about 1535.
Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper · Image: 18 × 11 cm · Art Institute of Chicago
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Details and source
- Museum title
- King Anushirwan and the Owls, from the Khamsa of Nizami
- Artist
- Iran Tabriz
- Date
- Safavid dynasty (1501–1722), c.1535
- Medium
- Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 18 × 11 cm (7 1/8 × 4 3/8 in.); Paper: 27.9 × 15.7 cm (11 × 6 3/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Samuel L. Nickerson Fund
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.