The Persian Lover

Persians have a long tradition of sensuality and languor -- i.e. 'Oriental decadance' so disdained by their enemies, the Periclean Greeks, who fought these long-haired warriors who brought women and chefs with them as they invaded Greece. (just as Mark Antony's Roman army carried their pornography with them a few hundred years later when they invaded Persia -- much to the contemptuous amusement of the Persians who captured their baggage train)




This is how I've always imagined myself as lover --- going back to my teen years and the Persian miniatures at the Cincinnati Art Museum -- soft, sleek, dreamy, shimmering, languid, sinuous, gentle -- and usually (but not always !) alone -- in solitary reverie. Are there any such images of lovers in European painting ? Venus and Mars ? ( I've just never identified with that scary couple)

How many paintings are there in the A.I.C. ? Are there any others dedicated to the love between a man and a woman ? (I guess there are --- but I can't recall any right now.)





Seated figure style of Reza Abbasi, Isfahan, 1640 -- accompanied by lines of poetry that read: "In my hand is neither my heart nor the one who ravishes my heart"


(final note: it looks like the Persian lover may well play a decisive role in the history of my own family -- for the ONLY great-great grandchild of my immigrant, Jewish grandparents is currently a little girl named Aleaa -- whose father is a Persian lover -- and whose mother (my niece in Johnson City, Tennessee)providentially resembles an Iranian movie star.)