Overruling Structural Pattern of the "Shirin Bathing" Works in the Persian Painting Tradition

Shirin bathing narrative of Khamsa Nizami was one of the literary subjects that many artists tried to depict in various periods and schools of Persian painting and created great works. On the other hand, it seemed those pre-determined and defined visual conventions were assumed for each subject or literary narrative, in the tradition of Persian painting. Also, painters in every era and school were faithful and committed to the same structure in their works. Due to their continuity, these conventions became a structural model in the same literary subject. This article aimed to find the overruling structural pattern of the "Shirin bathing" works in the Persian painting tradition. It sought to answer the question, what were the structural similarities and differences between the paintings with the "Shirin Bathing" theme? This study was done by the descriptive-analytical method with a comparative approach, which collected library information and viewed pictures directly. The method of data analysis was qualitative. The structural similarity of the illustrations of Shirin bathing's narrative includes "guidelines and the focal point of the picture", " eye movement track in the picture and visual form" and "the direction of the figures gaze". Painters have used two parallel diagonal guidelines that created a 90-degree angle with the diameter of the painting to embed the elements of the painting, especially the figure of Khosrow and Shirin. The eye movement track in the picture was coordinated with the visual triangle. Due to a group of images having axial symmetry with another group, the direction of the eye movement track on the works was different. The direction of Khosrow's look at Shirin was slanted from top to bottom, like other "pictures of glance" in the tradition of Persian painting. On the other hand, although the painters were less deconstructive in portraying this narrative, the paintings were structurally different from each other in the "frame proportions" component.