The Cambridge Shahnama Centre for Persian Studies

Modern artists (excepting of course those still creating book illustrations), producing pictures to hang on the walls, are engaged in a different way with the poem, and at a greater remove from it. The responses can still be more or less literal and figurative, in depicting characters from the SHAHNAMEH in identifiable scenes, or reinterpretations of well-known episodes - such as Rostam killing the White Div; or they can engage with the text of the poem in a more personal way, or to make a political statement, taking themes rather than actual stories as the topic for the work. In some cases, this thematic treatment can lead to an abstraction that seems far from any tangible connection to the text or the meaning of the poem, sublimated into the artist's own visual language. We also note that several artists acknowledge importance of the calligrapher word - calligraphy playing so great a part in the art of the Muslim world - and thus, at least to all appearances, a reconnection of text with image