In his History, Rashiduddin of Kazvin merrily writes that 250 years ago in Kazvin, manuscript illumination, calligraphy and illustration were the most esteemed and beloved arts. The reigning Shah in Kazvin at that time ruled over forty countries from Byzantium to China-perhaps the love of book arts was the secret of this great power-but alas, he had no male heir. To prevent the lands he’d conquered from being divided up after his death, the Shah decided to find a bright miniaturist husband for his beautiful daughter, and toward this end, arranged a competition among the three great young masters of his atelier, all of whom were bachelors. According to Rashiduddin’s History, the object of the competition was very simple: Whoever made the most remarkable painting would be the victor! Like Rashiduddin himself, the young miniaturists knew that this meant painting in the manner of the old masters, and thus, each of the three made a rendition of the most widely liked scene: In a garden reminiscent of Heaven itself, a young and beautiful maiden stood amid cypress and cedar trees, among timid rabbits and anxious swallows, immersed in lovelorn grief, staring at the ground. Unknowingly, the three miniaturists had rendered the same scene exactly as the old masters would have; yet, the one who wanted to distinguish himself and thereby take responsibility for the painting’s beauty had hidden his signature among the narcissus flowers in the most secluded spot in the garden. And on account of this brazen act, by which the artist broke with the humility of the old virtuosos, he was immediately exiled from Kazvin to China. Thus, the competition was begun anew between the two remaining miniaturists. This time, both painted a picture lovely as a poem, depicting a beautiful maiden mounted on her horse in a magnificent garden. But one of the miniaturists-whether by a slip of his brush or by intent, no one knew-had depicted strangely the nostrils of the white horse belonging to the maiden with Chinese eyes and high cheekbones, and this was straightaway perceived as a flaw by the Shah and his daughter. True, this miniaturist hadn’t signed his name, but in his splendid painting, he’d apparently included a masterful variation in the horse’s nostrils to distinguish the work. The Shah, declaring that “Imperfection is the mother of style,” exiled this illustrator to Byzantium. Yet there was one last significant event according to the weighty History by Rashiduddin of Kazvin, which occurred when preparations were being made for the wedding between the Shah’s daughter and the talented miniaturist, who painted exactly like the old masters without any signature or variation: For the entire day before the wedding, the Shah’s daughter gazed grief-stricken at the painting made by the young and handsome great master who was to become her husband on the morrow. As darkness fell that evening, she presented herself to her father: “It is true, yes, that the old masters, in their exquisite paintings, would depict beautiful maidens as Chinese, and this is an unalterable rule come to us from the East,” she said. “But when they loved someone, the painters would include an aspect of their beloved in the rendering of the beautiful maiden’s brow, eye, lip, hair, smile, or even eyelash. This secret variation in their illustrations would be a sign that could be read by the lovers and the lovers alone. I’ve stared at the beautiful maiden mounted on her horse for the whole day, my dear father, and there’s no trace of me in her! This miniaturist is perhaps a great master, he’s young and handsome, but he does not love me.” Thereupon, the Shah canceled the wedding at once, and father and daughter lived out the remainder of their lives together.
“Thus, according to this third parable, imperfection gives rise to what we call ”style,“” said Black quite politely and respectfully. “And does the fact that the miniaturist is in love become apparent from the hidden ”sign“ in the image of the beauty’s face, eye or smile?”
“Nay,” I said in a manner that bespoke my confidence and pride. “What passes from the maiden, the focus of the master miniaturist’s love, to his picture is not ultimately imperfection or flaw but a new artistic rule. Because, after a time and through imitation, everyone will begin to depict the faces of maidens just like that particular beautiful maiden’s face.”
We fell silent. I saw that Black, who’d listened intently to the three parables I recounted, had now focused his attentions upon the sounds my attractive wife made as she roamed the hallway and the next room. I glared at him menacingly.
“The first story established that ”style“ is imperfection,” I said. “The second story established that a perfect picture needs no signature, and the third marries the ideas of the first and the second, and thus demonstrates that ”signature‘ and “style” are but means of being brazenly and stupidly self-congratulatory about flawed work.“
How much did this man, to whom I’d just given an invaluable lesson, understand of painting? I said: “Have you understood who I am from my stories?”
“Certainly,” he said, without conviction.
So you don’t try to discern who I am through his eyes and perceptions, allow me to tell you directly. I can do anything. Like the old masters of Kazvin, I can draw and color with pleasure and glee. I say this with a smile: I’m better than everybody. I have nothing whatsoever to do with the reason for Black’s visit, which-if perchance my intuition serves me correctly-is the disappearance of Elegant Effendi the Gilder.
Black asked me about the mixing of marriage and art.
I work a lot and I enjoy my work. I recently married the most beautiful maiden in the neighborhood. When I’m not illuminating, we make love like mad. Then I set to working again. That’s not how I answered. “It’s a serious issue,” I said. “If masterpieces issue from the brush of a miniaturist, when it comes to issuing it to his wife, he’ll be at a loss to bestir the same joy,” I said. “The opposite holds true as well: If a man’s reed satisfies the wife, his reed of artistry will pale in comparison,” I added. Like everyone who envies the talent of the miniaturist, Black, too, believed these lies and was heartened.
He said he wanted to see the last pages I’d illustrated. I seated him at my worktable, among the paints, inkwells, burnishing stones, brushes, pens and reed-cutting boards. Black was examining the double-leaf painting I was in the process of completing for the Book of Festivities, which portrayed Our Prince’s circumcision ceremony, and I sat beside him on the red cushion whose warmth reminded me that my beautiful wife with her gorgeous thighs had been sitting here recently; indeed, I had used my reed pen to draw the sorrow of the unfortunate prisoners before Our Sultan, as my intelligent wife clung to the reed of my manhood.
The two-page scene I was painting depicted the deliverance of condemned and imprisoned debtors and their families by the grace of Our Sultan. I’d situated the Sultan on the corner of a carpet covered in bags full of silver coins, as I’d personally witnessed during such ceremonies. Behind Him, I’d located the Head Treasurer holding and reading out of the debt ledger. I’d portrayed the condemned debtors, chained to each other by the iron shackles around their necks, in their misery and pain with knit brows, long faces and some with teary eyes. I’d painted the lute players in shades of red with beatific faces as they accompanied the joyous prayers and poems that followed the Sultan’s presentation of His benevolent gift: sparing the condemned from prison. To emphasize deliverance from the pain and embarrassment of debt-though I had no such plan at the outset-beside the last of the miserable prisoners, I’d included his wife, wearing a purple dress in the wretchedness of destitution, along with his longhaired daughter, sorrowful yet beautiful, clad in a crimson mantle. So that this man Black, with his furrowed brows, might understand how illustrating equaled love-of-life, I was going to explain why the chained gang of debtors was extended across two pages; I was going to tell him about the hidden logic of red within the picture; I was going to elucidate the things my wife and I had laughingly discussed while admiring the piece, such as how I’d lovingly colored-something the old masters never did-the dog resting off to the side in precisely the same hue as the Sultan’s caftan of atlas silk, but he asked me a very rude, discourteous question: