Exploring the Grotesque in the Lithographic Pictorial Version of “the Story of His Highness Solomon”

Amongst the lithographic pictorial books is the one named "expressing the story of His Highness Solomon" that, meanwhile narrating in the Qajar Era's colloquial language, possesses the visual feature of grotesque. The present article adopts an iconological approach and uses a descriptive-elaborative method to answer how these strange creatures were depicted in the pictures of the book mentioned above, and what has been the source of their formation? The results indicated that the strange imaginary creatures displayed in the pictures had been drawn along with the other visual elements within the good and evil forces' format. The source of their formation has been the arts of the Jiroft and China  civilizations, the Achaemenid and Sassanid reliefs and inscriptions,  the Mesopotamian, Chinese, Indian and Egyptian myths, and additionally symbols of the civilizations in Elam, Lorestan, medieval European art and later eras. all of which have been applied for the embodiment of these forces. Amongst the symbols evident in the paintings, there are creatures with four hands or horned hands, creatures with one eye and with hands in gloves as well as things like stars, bells, trumpet, idols and also persons like clown and Pan, a woman, all of which are rooted in the Hebrew and Greek arts' thoughts. They have been utilized consciously in terms of both form and visual principles and regulations and semantic load to be the narrator of this book.