Ferdowsi in the Mirror of Persian Painting

This article is to discuss the status and importance of Ferdowsi in Persian painting. The core question concerns to the place that Ferdowsi has in Persian Paintings? What aspect or aspects of this Persian poet have attracted the painters and how they have showed these aspects? On the basis of this, and through meditation on Persian paintings, those painting in which Ferdowsi is depicted are selected to characterize Ferdowsi’s personality by reading the inter-connected links between textual and pictorial works. In the course of this essay we will expose that two main attributes of Ferdowsi, namely his elocutionary style and his free spirit, have been of great value to the artists and their main sources for artistic or literary creation.