“Persian Miniature” from the Lev Gumilev’s Museum-apartment: the riddle of textual decor

Abstract

the “Persian miniature” was the gift by A. A. Akhmatova to her son after his return from the concentration camp. The sheet includes the painting and the textual decor placed around it. There is no documentary evidence of the history of the present, a donator or the symbolical meaning of the donation. This article discusses the problem of the textual decor and its connection with the content of the picture. The textual decor is presented by extended cartouches with oriental inscriptions. The most frequent are the quotations from Jami’s “Yusuf and Zuleikha”. This helps to correlate the textual decor with the meaning of the scene presented in the picture. Since professor A. Boldyrev was invited to interpret the textual decor of the picture on Akhmatova’s request, there might be a hypothetical connection between Akhmatova’s awareness of the meaning of the text and her donation of the miniature to her son.