Folio from a Khamsa (Quintet) by Nizami (d. 1209); Couple with attendants; verso: text: Chapter thirty-one: discrediting overindulgence in eating, part from Khusraw va Shirin

From the Khamsa of Nizami. This single page comes from a dispersed copy of Nizami's Khamsa, or quintet, a classical Persian text fequently illustrated in the Safavid period. The scribe's name, along with the date and place he completed the text's transcription, is found in the still-extant colophon. Although the iconography of Khamsa illustrations has been established well before the Safavid era, this charming painting of two lovers and musicians in a garden does not seem to refer to any specific Khamsa episode. It may well be that the painting was added after 1513, either in Herat or in Bukhara, a city whose painters closely followed the Herat styles. The empty panel in the upper right, presumably reserved for a verse or a heading, also suggests that the manuscript was never entirely finished.