Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Seeing King Solomon Through The Verses Of Hafez: A Critical Study Of Two Safavid Manuscript Paintings, Richard W. Ellis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is focused on a previously unpublished collage comprised of two manuscript fragments from Safavid Iran. One fragment contains a painting that depicts an enthronement scene featuring King Solomon, which, as I argue, was taken from a copy of the Majalis al-Ushshaq by Kamal al-Din Gazurgahi. The other fragment contains verses from the Divan of Hafez. The fragment from the Divan has been gutted and overlaps the painting of Solomon, effectively framing the image. Through visual and textual analysis, I argue that both fragments come from manuscripts that were produced in Shiraz. I further argue that the painting of …