Turkoman Prisoner

Turkomen Prisoner

Figures of horsemen, as the pair performing the Parthian shot (MMA 45.174.3) and the Turkomen horseman (MMA 45.174.7), are found in both the role of warrior and hunter with sometimes a certain ambiguity as to which activity is represented in a particular drawing. In the case of a Turkomen prisoner, such as the one in this drawing, his condition as a prisoner under restraint seems clear enough; and yet other paintings and drawings of this popular subject depict the warriors often girt about with their weapons, no doubt with intent on the artist's part, and successfully so, of adding to their aura of formidable ferocity. A number of paintings and drawings of unfettered Turkomen warriors are also to be found, testifying to the overall fascination with these figures.[1]

The Turkomen prisoner shown here, like all depictions of this subject, is fettered by the palahang, a device made of a forked stick of wood, to which one wrist, usually the left, has been attached by an additional band of metal or wood. The V formed by the fork goes on either side of the head with a crossbar across the back of the neck. In the Museum's drawing, the prisoner kneels with his right hand resting lightly over the end of his sash, which drops down over his raised right knee. An almost identical pose (without the sash) is seen in the painting of a prisoner published by Marteau and Vever.[2] He wears a split-brim hat similar to our prisoner's, but is carrying his bowcase, quiver, and sword, as well as a weapon consisting of a ball on the end of a thong attached to a short shaft. Another Turkomen in the same pose with the same weapons but a different costume and wearing a turban, painted in Bukhara, is in the Pierpont Morgan Library (M.386.2). The Museum's drawing is a seventeenth-century work, which in composition and iconography was clearly based on sixteenth-century forerunners. But the only weapon carried by the prisoner in the Museum's drawing is a dagger, the top half of which is hidden by a hanging end of the voluminous sash.

The calligraphic line swelling and diminishing as it delineates the form of face and body and the sash with the staccato brushstrokes of its hanging ends are all associated with the stylistic innovations of Reza 'Abbasi, which were carried on by his followers. There is no horizon line to tell the viewer when the plants and rocks of the landscape give way to the scudding clouds, all, however, making a suitable calligraphic surrounding for the kneeling figure. While his physiognomy clearly identifies the figure as a Turkomen and the double plume in his cap suggests a prince or nobleman, the artist is by no means attempting to individualize the figure, as opposed, possibly, to some of the prototypes. He seems to be intent on creating a pleasing figural composition — based on his command of the rhythms of the calligraphic line — that was doubtless destined to be mounted in an album.[3]

[Swietochowski and Babaie 1989]

Footnotes:

1. See, for example, Marteau, Georges, and Henri Vever. Miniatures persanes, 2 vols. Paris, 1913, vol. II, pI. CXV, fig. 139, from the Goloubew Collection, called "Portrait de prince ou de chef d'armee."

2. Ibid., pI. CXIIl, fig. 137.

3. There are too many paintings of Turkomen prisoners to cite here, but for a drawing, as opposed to more numerous paintings, in similar pose, only with the right hand in the palahang, see Blochet, Edgar. Musulman Painting XIIth–XVIIth Century. Translated by Cicely M. Binyon. Paris, 1929; reprint ed., London, n.d., pI. CXIX, a 16th-century work. For a Turkomen, not, however, a prisoner, in a pronounced calligraphic drawing style, see Welch Anthony. Artists for the Shah: Late Sixteenth-Century Painting at the Imperial Court of Iran. New Haven and London, 1976, fig. 24, by Sadiqi, ca. 1595.

Marking: - Sticker on bottom right in pencil: 340
- Center in pencil: 409 / 2
- Sticker on bottom covered with scotch tape (typed)

Hagop Kevorkian, New York (until d. 1962; his estate sale, Sotheby's, London,December 6, 1967, no. 71, to MMA)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Persian Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 13–December 31, 1989, no. 5.

"The Property of the Kevorkian Foundation, December 6, 1967." In Highly Important Oriental Manuscripts and Miniatures. London: Sotheby's, New York, 1967. no. 71, p. 22, ill. opp. p. 22 (b/w).

Swietochowski, Marie, and Sussan Babaie. Persian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989. no. 5, pp. 20–21, ill. pl. 5 (b/w).