"Gushtasp Slays the Rhino-Wolf", Folio from a Shahnama (Book of Kings)ca. 1330–40
Exiled in the land of Rum, the Iranian prince Gushtasp ventures into a forest to kill the karg, a monstrous horned wolf that terrorised the country, on behalf of a suitor who must slay it to win the emperor’s daughter. More about this work
About this work
Exiled in the land of Rum, the Iranian prince Gushtasp ventures into a forest to kill the karg, a monstrous horned wolf that terrorised the country, on behalf of a suitor who must slay it to win the emperor’s daughter. He brings it down with arrows and finishes it with his sword. This page comes from a Shahnama made in Iran in the 1330s, a period when painters under Mongol rule were absorbing Chinese landscape and figure conventions into Persian book painting.
Written by Ochre Editions.
How it was made
- Opaque watercolour
- Watercolour made opaque with white or chalk and laid in flat, even layers. Persian and Indian painters ground their colours from minerals, applied them with the finest brushes and burnished the finished page.
- Watercolour
- Pigment in gum arabic, thinned with water and laid in transparent washes. Nothing white is painted: the light is the paper showing through.
- Ink on paper
- Ink made from soot and animal glue, ground with water on an inkstone. A single brush can give a hair-fine line or a broad wash, and nothing can be corrected.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Met has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 1974.290.23
- Credit
- Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Type
- Codices
- Department
- Islamic Art
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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