The Study of Structure of Paintings Related to Confrontation of Khosrow and Shirin from the Semiotics viewpoint

Abstract

In the history of Iranian art, the greatest and most important paintings provided by the Iranian painters deal with visualization of literary books. One of the famous literary types is lyrical literature and romantic stories which has gained a wide range to express the emotions and feelings of the poet in Persian literature. Therefore, love stories and scenes of lovers' confrontation are of the main visualized themes in Iranian painting. On the other hand, love stories have created opportunities to display divine and mystical love metaphorically in terms of the narratives of earthly love, and have been taken into consideration by Iranian illustrators and painters. Visualization of lovers' confrontation has structural basics and features which seem to have common structure and common spirit when placed together. In the current study the comparison of two painting related to Khosrow and Shirin in two different times has been exanimated in a qualitative and descriptive method. This study aims at identifying common features and the general principles of these paintings based on the foundations of visual arts and with the help of analysis and interpretation of two iconic models related to the confrontation of Khosrow and Shirin, and discusses about how the artists used this kind of visualization in their works. The results showed clear differences in Semiotics point of view such as: the arrangement of the figures, the usage of colors, element composition, and also a discrepancy in viewpoints of two painters about the mystical or the earthly love of Khosrow and Shirin.