Vaq,Sixth Principles of Persian Painting

The Iranian world has a well-established Tradition of images that goes back to anitiquity. The structure relation between text and image become increasingly intricate in illustrated manuscripts, at least from the middle of forteenth century onwards. These links can be observed through the composition and layout of the paintings. These relations seem to be expressed in some Persian poetical texts. It would be interesting to know if this relationship between painting and text found during the classical period of Persian painting had some theoretical basis. The Theory know as the «seven principles of painting» can throw some light on the sobject. Although probably drawing on an earlier litrary tradition, this theory appeared in Safavid Iran, and this theory represented an attempt to link painting to calligraphy in order to give the former some sort of legitimacy in Islamic Art. The study of such a theory can through some light on the relations which existed between calligraphy and painting. Some technical aspects will also be discussed through the study of the seven principles of painting and related terminolog. These seven princeples apear in a number of texts on the art, such as Abdi Beg Shirazi’s Poem, Dust Mohammad’s Preface to Bahram Mirza Album, Qutb Al-Din Mohammad Qissakhan’s Preface to Shah Tahmasp Album, Qadi Ahmad’s Gulistan-i hunar and Sadiqi Beg’s Canon. The Historical Circumstances which made the formulation of this theory will be also considered. The earliest referece to seven principles of painting seems to have been made by Abdi Beg Shirazi in his Rowzat al-sifat, without naming them. But Qutb al-Din Muhammad Qissakhvan names them in his preface to Album: «As in calligraphy, which has six styles, in this technique [i. e, painting] seven styles are to be found: Islami, Khata’i, Farangi, Fassali, Abr, Daq, [Vaq], Girih.» The list given by Sadigi Beg is slightly different: Islimi, Khatai, Abr, Vaq, Nilufar, Farangi, Band-I rumi. Qadi Ahmad gives almost the same list as Qutb al-Din. Vaq in his list to be in sixth styles of Persian Painting. All the operations described by these authors seem to deal with book painting and bookmaking. But this should be noted that the seven principles of painting were not limited to bookmaking. The most spectacular and earliest painting which decorate the borders of Persian manuscript pages are something of an enigma. The convention of elaborate border paintings which included human figures did not re-emerge until the early 12th century. The small paintings of such incidents as warriors fighting, Khusraw watching Shirin bathing or Majnun in the desert, which occur in the borders of pages in the Iskandar Sultan miscellany, are far outnumbered by geometric and Islimi motifs which occur in many different combinations of design and colour. They include what is probably the earliest example of an Islimi bearing human and animal heads, The vaq design, so-called after the mystical tree which hung with heads in Place of fruit. The variety and style of Vaq painting, as sixth principle of Persian painting, is discuss in this article.