Painting by Riza-yi 'Abbasi | The Old man and the Youth

Title: The Old man and the Youth

Artist: Painting by Riza-yi 'Abbasi (Iranian, ca. 1565–d. 1635)

Calligrapher: Nur al-Din Muhammad Lahiji

Date: second quarter 17th century

Geography: Attributed to Iran, Isfahan

Medium: Ink, transparent and opaque watercolor, and gold on paper

Dimensions: H. 5 in. (12.7 cm)
W. 2 1/8 in. (5.4 cm)

Classification: Codices

Credit Line: Fletcher Fund, 1925

Object Number: 25.68.5

The Old Man and the Youth

This album page is composed by the pasting together of three separate pieces framed within two bands of floral-decorated borders. The standing figures of a youth and an old man are drawn in ink and touched with opaque colors and gold. Both are signed by Reza 'Abbasi and fit comfortably within his oeuvre at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In style and mood the two drawings seem so closely related that had it not been for the cut-out and pasted condition of these sheets, they could be conceived as a single composition. In fact, the theme of an old man standing or walking behind a youth is known from late fifteenth-century and early-sixteenth-century painting.

In the miniature painting Old Man and Youth in a Landscape in the Freer Gallery of Art (44.48A), the old man holds on to a staff and points toward the youth, who seemingly turns in response to the elder's call. Gently sloping rocks in the background with trees growing in between and birds resting here and there, lead to a field of spring flowers, where we find the two figures standing near a stream that bends to follow the roundness of the frame. Whether the inscribed poetic passages above and below the painting were relative to it is not certain. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that the passage relates the encounter between a wise old man and an arrogant youth.

Whatever the meaning of the theme, in the Freer painting the imploring elder and spring backdrop correlate with an even earlier painting from a manuscript of the Khamseh of Amir Khosrow Dihlavi, dated 1485.[1] Here we find the same spring landscape with the youth leaning on a fragile young tree and the old man stepping forward with the help of a staff and pointing toward the youth. A large plane tree visually separates the two figures, as do a tree and rocks in the Freer painting, and the central band of the frame in the Museum's drawing. Most telling, however, is the passage from the Khamseh that accompanies this painting. In this context, although from a mystical point of view, the old man's desire for the youth has not yet faded away. The popularity of the theme is attested to by its continued life in the seventeenth century, for example, the Old Man and the Youth in the Bibliotheque Nationale, where the old man's pursuit assumes a comical quality as the artist caricatures his imploring attitude in the drooping lines of his face to match those of his sleeves.[2]

[Swietochowski and Babaie 1989]

Footnotes:

1. Martin, F.R. The Miniature Painting and Painters of Persia, India and Turkey from the 8th to the 18th Century. 2 vols. London, 1912, pI. 75.

2. Stchoukine, Ivan. Les Peintures des Manuscrits de Shah 'Abbas 1er à la fin des Safavis. Paris, 1964, pI. XXXIV.

Signature: Drawn by the very humble Riza 'Abbasi

Inscription: The poetry at the top is a hemistich of a couplet. Translated literally, it reads:
"Your green line that is the sign of virtue."
The "green line" refers to the shadow that appears at the upper-lip of a girl when she begins to mature. Thus, the verse somewhat comically refers to a girl's entry into womanhood. The author or literary work from which the verse was taken is unknown.

Marking: - On the back of the cardboard messily scrawled in Arabic numerals: no. 47, a smudged seal, the no. 152 and "no. 86"

[ Hagop Kevorkian, New York, until 1925; sold to MMA]

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Persian Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 13–December 31, 1989, no. 32.

Dimand, Maurice S. A Handbook of Muhammedan Decorative Arts. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1930. pp. 48, 51, ill. fig. 20 (b/w).

Dimand, Maurice S. A Handbook of Muhammadan Art. 2nd rev. and enl. ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1944. p. 54, ill. fig. 29 (b/w).

Ferrier, Ronald W., ed. The Arts of Persia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. pp. 216–17, ill. pl. 35 (b/w).

Swietochowski, Marie, and Sussan Babaie. Persian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989. no. 32, pp. 74–75, ill. pl. 32 (b/w).

Babaie, Sussan. "The Sound of the Image/The Image of the Sound: Narrativity in Persian Art of the 17th Century.." Islamic Art and Literature (2000). pp. 143–62, ill. pl. 1.

Yarshater, Ehsan, ed. Encyclopaedia Iranica vol. 7 (1996). p. 544, ill. pl. XLI (b/w).

Babayan, Kathryn. The City and Anthology : Erotism and Urbanity in Early Modern Isfahan. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2021. pp. 19–21, ill. fig. 0.5 (color).

Ekhtiar, Maryam. "Ahl al-Bayt Imagery Revisited : A Drawing by Isma'il Jalayir at the Metropolitan Museum of Art." In Revealing the Unseen : New perspectives on Qajar Art, edited by Gwenaëlle Fellinger. London: Gingko, 2021. fig. 9, pp. 80–93, ill. p. 86.

Mumtaz, Murad. Faces of God : Images of Devotion in Indo-Muslim Painting, 1500–1800. Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section II South Asia, vol. 39. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2023. p. 239, ill. fig. 114.