A Neo-formalist Reading of Visiting Majnoon to Leili from Haft Awrang of Ibrhim Mirza

Most sources agreed on the novelty of some of Ibrahim Mirza`s paintings in Haft Awrang kept in the Ferier Collection. This research is carried out through a descriptive- analytic method and based on the neo-formalist theoretical framework. In order to answer the question of how the form and content connect in this work with regard to the general characteristics of Iranian painting, it focuses on the structural and formal features of the work with the emphasis on its decomposition, breakdown of the visual elements and the relationships between them. Also, we use the terms of form and meaning from the semantic levels of Roland Barthes theory, the structuralist thinker. At the final stage and the assessment level, we refer to the proportion of form for the expression of the content. The purpose of opening the levels of meaning is to highlight the structural bases governing this image and the possibilities that it opens to the future art. The result of the neo-formalist reading of this image is that the levels of meaning indicate that the focus of poem and the composition of the painting are not completely in accordance to each other, and a breakthrough between the narrative focal and the composition of the painting has happened. Also, the open and snaky structure, parallel and open plans and lack of frame, highlights fluidity in the structure, which dynamism, and actions of human beings, which is not a suitable form for implying the meaning that is the virtue of the love process.