Calligraphic exercises and verses of Hafiz (Persian, about 1325–1389) (verso)
calligraphy by Mahmud ibn Ishaq al-Shahabi (Persian, active mid- to late 1500s)
1575–76
- Medium
- Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
- Classification
- Calligraphy
- Dimensions
- Page: 28 x 23.8 cm (11 x 9 3/8 in.)
- Culture
- Persian, Uzbekistan, Bukhara
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Gift in honor of Madeline Neves Clapp; Gift of Mrs. Henry White Cannon by exchange; Bequest of Louise T. Cooper; Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund; From the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
This fine calligraphic work is signed and dated by a calligrapher who was highly regarded in both Safavid Iran and Mughal India. Mughal albums typically had a painted portrait or figural scene on one side, and a work of calligraphy on the other. The British civil servant Sir Charles Forbes made his album following that format.
The verses are a lament over a lack of wine, beginning: For some days now the Daughter of the Vine has been lost to us, Gone away to tend to her own affairs. Be alert and prepared as a search party. Her dress is of rubies, and she wears a tiara of delicate glass.
