Mounted Hunter with Dog Pursuing Game Birds

Mounted Hunter

Hunting was a truly royal pastime, as was feasting, and during the fifteenth century most court-commissioned manuscripts had double-page frontispieces of either a royal hunt or a royal feast. In epic literature, heroes were almost by definition great hunters, and manuscripts abound with illustrations of fabled hunters and various exploits of their hunts. Hunting was also used as a metaphor to express the courage and skill of a ruler or hero. In later literature the hunt imagery evolved into a more romantic, didactic, and mystical metaphor.[1] Hawking, or falconry, was among the highly esteemed branches of the sport of kings, and scenes of hawks after game birds are not uncommon, although they compete with scenes of courtiers with falcons on their wrists taking their ease either before or after the hunt.[2]

The drawing illustrated here is unusual in that no hunting falcons are present; the rider himself pursues the game and successfully shoots one of the three flying cranes with his bow and arrow. The sense of motion and animation is also unusual as both the dog and the horse are shown leaping into the air as if trying to reach the flying quarry. The taut curve of the dog's tail seems to help its forward surge. The tree at the left acts as a kind of springboard from which the scene is propelled toward the limitless air and space on the right. The prince's hair, the mane of the horse, the hair on the dog's back and rear leg, and the rider's boot have all been given texture. Otherwise, the drawing is so economical of line that it could have been made as a model, were it not for the sense of spontaneity, usually absent from model drawings.

A later drawing in the Freer Gallery of Art (53.46) shows a similar subject, with two mounted hunters and a falcon attacking cranes (figure 13 in this volume). The flying gallop of both mounts, the bent grass before them, and the movement of birds lend motion to the scene but the tree circling back into the picture, while making a pleasing composition, stops the directional flow of movement, contrary to the Museum's drawing, which, however, is an altogether less elaborate work.[3]

[Swietochowski and Babaie 1989]

Footnotes:

1. An informative discussion of the hunt and its metaphors in Persian literature is presented in Hanaway, William L., Ir. "The Concept of the Hunt in Persian Literature." Boston Museum Bulletin, vol. LXIX, nos. 355 and 356, 1971, pp. 21–69.

2. See, for example, MMA 45.174.27.

3. For another earlier drawing of a mounted falconer about to release his hawk after an assemblage of flying and swimming ducks, see Blochet, Edgar. Persian Paintings. Exhibition catalogue. New York. 1930, no. 105, where the hunter has the wings of a decoy hanging from his saddle. In the Freer drawing the younger falconer is holding the same equipment aloft. In detailed drawings, much can often be learned from the hunter's equipage.

[ H. P. Kraus, New York]; Richard Ettinghausen, Princeton, NJ (until 1975; gifted to MMA)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Persian Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 13–December 31, 1989, no. 6.

Swietochowski, Marie, and Sussan Babaie. Persian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989. no. 6, pp. 22–23, ill. pl. 6 (b/w).