Weiner Mihályné szerk.: Az Iparművészeti Múzeum Évkönyvei 12. (Budapest, 1970)

HOPP FERENC MÚZEUM — MUSÉE FERENC HOPP - Unger, Edmund: A Recently Discovered Persian Manuscript from the 14th Century

EDMUND DE UNGER A RECENTLY DISCOVERED PERSIAN MANUSCRIPT FROM THE 14TH CENTURY This paper is not an ambitious one. The time limit and my own limited knowledge restricts me to confine myself to acquaint you with the manuscript I have found in December 1967. I shall merely give you factual details without wishing to analyze it or to find its place among the creations of Persian painting. The Manuscript consists of 19 pages. The size of each page is 7 X 10 inches. Out of the 19 pages (which are written on both sides thus making 38 single pages) 13 consist of full scale miniatures. The remaining 25 pages are only partly written, their remaining half consists of astrological figures. The subject matter of the Manuscript is of an astrological nature, hitherto not yet identified. It is written in Arabic mainly in black ink, but the headlines are done in red, green and blue colours (fig. 1). The full miniatures are as follows: 1. Virgo in the auspices of Mercury. 2. Scorpio in the auspices of Mars. 3. Scales in the auspices of Venus. 4. Venus, Mars in the auspices of Scorpio (fig. 2). 5. Saturn in the auspices of Sagittarius. 6. Aquarius ill the auspices of Saturn. 7. Jupiter in the auspices of Pisces. 8. Venus in the auspices of Taurus (fig. 3). 9. Taurus in the auspices of Venus. 10. Mars in the auspices of Aries. 11. Mercury in the auspices of Jupiter. 12. Aquarius in the auspices of Saturn. 13. Pisces in the auspices of Jupiter. As you will have noted the first feature which occurs immediately is, that there is no sky depicted on any of the miniatures. Again another feature of the miniatures is that they are not high horizontal, that is to say the figures are not seen from above, but in the single plane convention, which was in use in the Mongol period and which derives from the Abbasid style of Bagdad. 14* 211