Material Objects: Slow Looking
This artifact, titled Hero and Dragon is a single-page illustration from 16th-century Iran. It shows the dragon coming down from its lair in the mountainside to hunt deer. This is just as the Shahnameh passage depicts the monster, as it dwells in its cave only coming out to eat and wreak havoc among men. Although this seems like standard dragon iconography, this leaflet gives an insight into the artist’s feelings towards the creatures.
The illustration is surrounded by a thick border to frame the scene. The rocks that take up the top left of the picture are tainted blue and craggy, to relate back to the inhospitality of the monster and its jagged disposition. This mountainside depiction also makes it clear that humans will have a hard time reaching its lair, making it a protective measure as well. The leaves and bushes are also very uninviting. Still focusing on the surrounding scenery, the bottom half of the page contains some more rough landscape with multiple animals hiding behind a bigger rock. Included are rabbits, antelopes, deer and what look to be dogs. The artist of this illustration makes it clear that the monster is something to be feared by man and animal.
The focus of the scene is on the dragon and hero, as the title suggests. Looking first at the hero, he is on horseback and very clearly stabbing the dragon with a long sword. Nothing about the warrior is decorated with colour though select pieces of his horse’s gear are coloured with gold. The artist’s commitment to storytelling through detail is apparent in their depiction of the dragon. From claws to the nose, the creature is made to be a beast. The dragon is seen with a deer between its massive sharp teeth. It is detailed with 2 colours including the gold illumination on its wings and red for both the sword wound and its eye. The chosen eye colour is interesting, and the relation between the blood and the blood-red eye shows how these mythical creatures were viewed in the medieval period. Just as the Shahnameh passage suggests, dragons are all-encompassing killers, and no warrior would be able to get past them.
In addition, highlighting other illustrations of medieval dragons would give insight to how they were widely perceived in Persia at the time.
Directly from the Shahnama, the picture “Gushtasp Slays The Dragon of Mount Saqila” also depicts the monster that Ferdowsi describes in the original passage with Sekandar. The dragon is illuminated in a purple colour, and towers over the hero, Gushtasp, with its claws and oversized arms. Although seeming confined to his place, the Prince of Iran defeats the dragon, despite what Ferdowsi describes in the alternate passage as a “massive maw”. The dragon’s teeth and tongue are on display as the Prince uses his sword on the monster’s head. Although the dragon in Sekandar’s story is described to be massive, in this illustration the creature seems to be the same height as Gushtasp. This suggests that the illuminator of this picture quite simply wanted to detail Gushtasp in a way that was worthy of himself. If the dragon took up the majority of the space, there would be not enough room for the fine patterned details that are seen clearly on his armour in the drawing.
The other object that is worth highlighting is also from the Shahnameh, titled “Isfandiyar Slays a Dragon”. In this depiction, many of the same aspects are present though there are some changes. For example, the dragon is coloured black, which is a very stark contrast from the other dragon illustrations as well as with the rest of the picture. It’s from ca. 1530 Iran and clearly shows the image that Ferdowsi was trying to invoke in Sekandar’s other encounter with a dragon. The creature is breathing outwards, and here the “noxious vapours [that] reach the moon” are on display. Sekandar is using a contraption to slay the dragon, again showcasing this genius when it comes to fighting off beasts. The men in the back look on while the hero completes his task alone. The dragon here is depicted ‘to scale’ with the humans, as Sekandar and his men are significantly smaller in comparison to the dragon, though this does make the men lose some detail. Most details go into the beast, which has finely drawn hairs and some scales, which further shows the importance of this animal in the story itself as well as the picture.