"Funeral Procession", Folio 35r from a Mantiq al-Tayr (Language of the Birds)

This page in a longer manuscript illustrates “Funeral Procession,” an anecdote told within a larger Sufi Persian epic, the Mantiq al-tair or The Language of the Birds. A son grieves his father in front of a cemetery gate, while a Sufi mystic comforts him saying that death is a release from pain. Court painters working in the atelier of a Persian Timurid Dynasty statesman painted this particular version. While the exchange takes place outside the cemetery gates at the bottom of the painting, members of the Timurid court would likely have relished interpreting the scenes inside the cemetery, unrelated to the main story. Timurid courtiers enjoyed formal complexity. Note, for example, the tree branches at the top and the flag at the bottom left, which escape the gold-rimmed picture plane – perhaps a clever comment on the framing device of the “story within a story.”

Folio from an illustrated manuscript