Lot 85: A PERSIAN OIL PAINTING OF YUSUF AND ZULAYKHA, QAJAR, CIRCA 1840

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Zulaykha seated in the background on a raised platform, grasping an orange in one hand and pointing with the other at haloed Yusuf approching from the right holding a ewer and cup, a servant girl with oranges in her lap standing behind Zulaykha, in the foreground a group of maidens assembled around a bowl of oranges, enraptured at Yusuf's beauty, and depicted in various states of ecstasy, one maiden fainting in another's arms, each figure dressed in richly bejeweled coat or bodice and wearing an elaborate headdress, a red floral carpet on the floor, a window with orange curtain at the back; oil on canvas, arched at top, in frame.

65 by 30 in. 165 by 76.2 cm.

Eskandar Aryeh Collection

For a panel depicting another episode of the Yusuf and Zulaikha story, probably by the same painter, see Sotheby's, New York, December 10th, 1981, no. 140A. For a painting from the same period depicting the same subject see S.J. Falk, Qajar Paintings: Persian Oil Paintings of the 18th and 19th Centuries, London, 1972, no. 42.

Yusuf is the biblical Joseph and Zulaykha the equivalent of Potiphar's wife. Their story was popularized in Iran by the 15th century writer Jami in his work Yusuf and Zulaykha. In this long poem Yusuf's "supernatural beauty is... described as being the especial gift of God, and recorded to have been so great that no woman could look on him without love. Zuleika, therefore, only shared the fate of all her sex. Some writers say the ladies who clamored so much against her for her passion were, when he first entered the chamber where they were all assembled, in the act of cutting pomegranates, some say oranges, and in their admiration and amazement cut their fingers instead of the fruit! Yussuf is considered the emblem of divine perfection, and Zuleika's love is the image of the love of the creature toward the Creator" (Charles F. Horne, ed., The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, New York, 1917, Vol. VIII: Medieval Persia, pp. 381-401).