Interpretation of Khavaran Nameh's paintings: an Iconology approach

One of the most important artistic and intellectual currents of thought in the history of Iran is literature. Culture of Iran cannot be separated from its context. Painting as a valuable legacy of art interacts with literature. One of the examples of this interaction between painting and literature is Khavaran Nameh manuscript by Ibn Hesam Khosfi. The importance of this version which painted and arranged in ninth AH is in artistic scenes. This religious-epic collection includes a description of First Imam's campaign; the poems, painting, and gilding of this version is appointed to "Farhad Naghash".
The paintings in this study is inspiration of Khavaran Nameh manuscript by Ibn Hessam Khosfi which is a prominent literary work. The significance of this version which painted and arranged in ninth century AH is in artistic scenes. This religious-epic collection contains descriptions of Imam Ali's (AS) battles. This collection is written in 830 AD and has followed the rhetoric of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh. Paintings and gildings of this version is appointed to "Farhad Naghash". He was from Shiraz and had created art in special manner. According to dated images (painted in 881, 882, 892 AH), it can be said this precious version is finished around 892 AH and it took ten years for him to write and design it. By painting this literary work, the painter has expanded the implication and added new layers of meaning. The problem that arises here is finding the explicit and hidden layers of meaning in the paintings of Khavaran Nameh manuscript. Therefore it is necessary to analyze and research artistic treasures of Iran with its theories, approaches, and new method in the field of art criticism and aesthetics. This article is an attempt to collect information in two ways: a library method and descriptive-analytic method. The paintings of Khavaran Nameh manuscript read and examined in three stage steps based on the Erwin Panofsky's iconology pattern that presented in twentieth century in order to make different layers of meaning transparent.
One of the innovative aspects of the present study lies in new approach to analyzing Khavaran Nameh's manuscript paintings. Artistic and literary works have different text and hypertext aspects, every critic shows one of these aspects. Some of these aspects are inter-textual and others are intra-textual.
The themes and the artist's point of view toward Iran traditional painting has been showed in this study not to the real world but to literary and art discourse. This discourse is related to myth by means of literary epic. The hidden meaning which achieved by three stage of iconology refers to four elements and mythical concepts.
The study of several paintings selected from Khavaran Nameh manuscript showed that the meanings of most of these paintings rooted in literature; even the paintings of completely religious books have mythical themes. Undoubtedly, read and meaning extracted from this study is not the definite meaning of these paintings. This point indicated that these paintings have high interpretational capacity and should be studied with new critical art approaches.