- Title
- Seated Youth Leaning on a Bolster
- Date Made
- circa 1605
- Medium
- Ink, opaque watercolors and gold on paper
- Dimensions
- 6 3/4 × 3 1/4 in. (17.15 × 8.26 cm)
Frame: 20 × 15 × 1 1/2 in. (50.8 × 38.1 × 3.81 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.73.5.458
- Collecting Area
- Art of the Middle East: Islamic
- Curatorial Notes
The depiction of a youth casually propping himself against a bolster seems to have been especially popular in seventeenth-century Iran, each representation having the same basic outline and details. This particular example was mounted as an album page, with two verses by the poet Jami (d. 1492) pasted along its top and bottom edges. Here the Persian couplets can be interpreted as playfully mocking the innocence—and perhaps the ignorance—of the youth: "Sometimes a rhyme is defective, sometimes a conceit is illogical. / Since you are far from making rhymes and conceits, you are excused from whatever you do in this regard."
- Selected Bibliography
- Pal, Pratapaditya, ed. Islamic Art: The Nasli M. Heeramaneck Collection. Los Angeles: Museum Associates, 1973.
