My Name is Red

In response to Black’s question about individuality in painting, Butterfly explains that as long as artists desire money and fame above appreciating the process, art will be vulgar. He then provides Black with three short parables about style and signature.

The first parable is about a young Khan interested in painting. This Khan loved one of the women in his harem and she returned his love. The lovers wanted to live forever and found that they felt time stop when they looked at paintings of the old masters. One miniaturist painted the Khan and his beloved in place of famous literary lovers. However, recognizing themselves in the painting made the Khan suspicious of his beloved. To make her jealous, the Khan slept with another woman, causing his beloved to kill herself. Realizing that the miniaturist’s decision to depict him and his love led to this awful event, the Khan ordered the artist blinded.

The second parable is about an elderly Sultan who had a beautiful Chinese wife. His son from an earlier marriage also fell in love with this wife. Frustrated by his feelings, the son focused on painting as a way to escape and became a gifted artist. The wife, recognizing the genius of the young man, encouraged the son to sign his paintings so his work would be recognized. However, the first painting he signed depicted Hüsrev’s son killing his father. The Sultan, seeing the painting, became fearful and believed the picture represented not a story but reality. The Sultan’s fears were realized when his son stabbed him in the heart.

The third parable tells of a Shah who decided to marry his only child, a daughter, to a miniaturist. To select the most talented miniaturist, the Shah held a competition in which each painter needed to recreate a well-known scene of a beautiful maiden in a garden. The victor, however, did not please the daughter: The painting contained no aspect of her features, which she assumed meant that the painter did not love her. Therefore, the wedding was cancelled, and the daughter never wed.

Explaining these parables, Butterfly tells Black that individual style is actually imperfection and that signing one’s artwork is a way to celebrate such imperfection. As Black leaves, Butterfly thinks to himself that he is the best miniaturist as he experiences ecstasy when creating art, which he believes means he can see the world through God’s eyes.

Arriving at Stork’s house, Black asks the miniaturist how he thinks of time. Stork offers three parables to explain his thoughts.

The first story is set in the time when Baghdad fell to the Mongols. At this time, a famed calligrapher thought that his books would last forever. However, the Mongols shredded his books, burned them, and threw their ashes into the river. Watching the destruction, the man swore to never write again. Instead, he began to paint, which inspired a 300-year renaissance of painting for Arab artists.

In the second story, a shah replaced the pictures of a khan he defeated with his own image. However, the most beautiful concubine of the former ruler made the shah promise not to alter a book illustration that depicted her and the deceased khan as the famous literary lovers. The shah agreed at first, but, haunted by the image, eventually drew his own face over that of the khan. His depiction was inaccurate, though, and soon after another shah who looked more like the image defeated him and took the beautiful concubine.

The last story is about an illustrator known for his ability to mimic the old masters. This artist became famous for his lack of individual style. At age 119, though, he fell in love with a 16-year-old apprentice and used deceit and manipulation to seduce the boy. One day, when staring at the apprentice, the artist caught a cold and the following day he went blind. Two days later he died.

Stork provides Black with a gloss of two of the three stories: The first story shows that time, not the artist, makes a picture perfect; the second story shows that escaping time is only possible through skill. Stork then asks Black to explain the final story and Black states that the story shows how forsaking the morally perfect artistic life will lead to death.

Black asks Olive about his understanding of blindness in relation to the artist. Olive explains his thoughts in three stories.

In his first story, an artist illustrated a book for his ruler. However, the ruler began to fear that a better version of the book might later be created for his enemy. The ruler decided to kill the artist, but was dissuaded by one of his concubines, who convinced the leader to blind the artist instead. After the artist was blinded, he went to the enemy, offering his services. From memory he then recreated a more beautiful version of the book, which led to the eventual defeat of the first ruler.

In the second story, each new ruler of the Ottoman Empire took the books written for the former ruler and created new versions celebrating his own reign. However, in one instance, the order of the pages became mixed up. The oldest head miniaturist, who was blind, had to rely on his memories and the help of a child to put the books together again.

Stork’s final story explains how one miniaturist believed blindness was Allah’s gift to artists who worked faithfully in his service. Indeed, this artist believed that “Allah’s vision of His world only becomes manifest through the memory of blind miniaturists” (80).

After his stories, Olive reiterates his belief that blindness is a gift from Allah. Black responds that he has heard of miniaturists who pretend to go blind because they view it as a sign of Allah’s grace. During their discussion, a young apprentice knocks at the door and informs them that Elegant’s body has been found.