between worldly love and divine intention. [Plate 14] Each of the future
brides represents a color, a planet, and an element associated with the
planet. The painting shows each of the seatedfigures as a woman. Patterns
and colors beneath each of them suggest a correspondence between the
visual mimetic representation of the form and the ideal representation
enabled through geometry.
Although partly metaphorical, such descriptions also represented real
palaces where poetry was commissioned and enjoyed. For example, an ode
by the poet Abu al-Qasim Hasan Unsuri (961–1039) about the palace of a
Ghaznavid vizier describes within it a picture gallery, the brilliant cupola of
which is like the cup of Kay Khosrau, where the“twelve [houses of the
zodiac] and the seven [planets] travel and rotate,”a common means of
depicting the dome of heaven within palace architecture. Unlike in the
palace of Bahram Gur, however, the room is full of pictures, as in the
Fortress of Form:
Like idol-temples, its arches arefilled with pictures
Blooming like roses,flawless as the hearts of the pious.
The brilliance of their moonlike faces ever shows forth roses; the curls of their black
locks ever scatter pitch...
[The paintings] are not embroidered fabrics, yet all (wear) embroidered
robes;
[They are] not a gold mine, but all of the purest gold,
Not a silver mine, but all of silver-work...
Therein is limned–with auspicious portent and felicitous star–
The lord, feasting andfighting, upon the throne, and in the hunt.
Hunting for lofty fortune;fighting the rage of foes;
Demonstrating everlasting affluence at the feast.^74
Although not specified as portraits, the description of moonlike faces
wearinggoldandsilverembroideredgarmentssuggestsapicturegallery
in which images of women surround that of a king. On an allegorical
level, the room suggests a passage from the realm of materiality and
beauty toward one of transcendence. For though the arches of the room
arefilled with pictures like temples dedicated to idols, these pictures are
also like the hearts of the pious whose faces radiate like the moon and
whose hair radiates darkness. Thisnotion of radiating black light is a
common poetic trope for divine light, the brightness of which darkens
human eyes.^75 Thus even a celebration of material wealth is intertwined
(^74) Meisami, 2001 : 27. (^75) Galip, 2005 : xix.
The Ambivalent Image 213