Wonders of the World. 2. The Garden.
Marguerite Waknine| N° d'inventaire | 23720 |
| Format | 16 x 21 |
| Détails | 56 p., notebook. |
| Publication | Angoulême, 2019 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9791094565575 |
There were seven of them in all. They were scattered in several places around the world: Memphis, Ephesus, Alexandria, Babylon, Rhodes, Halicarnassus, Olympia. All were the work of human art: statues, tombs, temples, lighthouses, pyramids, and gardens. But to these seven incontestable wonders should undoubtedly be added nature itself as represented by al-Mutahhar ibn Muhammad al-Yazdi, according to its forms and appearances, its presences, its luxuriance, and this delicate way of making each individual a unique being among his peers. This Persian manuscript dates from the 12th century. The concern of its author is to establish a treatise on natural history. Richly illustrated with painted miniatures (a genre of Persian art in full expansion between the 12th and 13th centuries), this treatise, even if it does not reveal the whole world to us, nevertheless remains a whole world of riches, where the existences of the mineral, the vegetable and the animal (men and beasts) are organized. Fascinatingly, the marvelous illustrations of this work do not contain for the most part any depth, as if the depth of all this creation were fully contained on its sole plane of immanence, on its sole surface, as if there were no gap or distance between creation, the creator and his creatures. How else to say what harmony can be? Here then is a world, most certainly, a universe, a place. And more: a there, where all is order and beauty, luxury, calm and voluptuousness, as Baudelaire's last two lines will later say, inviting us on a journey.
There were seven of them in all. They were scattered in several places around the world: Memphis, Ephesus, Alexandria, Babylon, Rhodes, Halicarnassus, Olympia. All were the work of human art: statues, tombs, temples, lighthouses, pyramids, and gardens. But to these seven incontestable wonders should undoubtedly be added nature itself as represented by al-Mutahhar ibn Muhammad al-Yazdi, according to its forms and appearances, its presences, its luxuriance, and this delicate way of making each individual a unique being among his peers. This Persian manuscript dates from the 12th century. The concern of its author is to establish a treatise on natural history. Richly illustrated with painted miniatures (a genre of Persian art in full expansion between the 12th and 13th centuries), this treatise, even if it does not reveal the whole world to us, nevertheless remains a whole world of riches, where the existences of the mineral, the vegetable and the animal (men and beasts) are organized. Fascinatingly, the marvelous illustrations of this work do not contain for the most part any depth, as if the depth of all this creation were fully contained on its sole plane of immanence, on its sole surface, as if there were no gap or distance between creation, the creator and his creatures. How else to say what harmony can be? Here then is a world, most certainly, a universe, a place. And more: a there, where all is order and beauty, luxury, calm and voluptuousness, as Baudelaire's last two lines will later say, inviting us on a journey.