Note 13 — Chapter XV · AT ERIVAN

The incrustation which my reader may admire upon the vaulting of the alcove is composed of pieces of mirror which shine like the facets of a jewel. An encrusted cornice of the same material surmounts the walls of the pavilion below a ceiling profusely adorned with floral designs, conspicuous being the iris and the rose. Eight paintings on canvas, applied to shallow recesses, are distributed around the room. I believe they are copies, made since the Russian occupation, of originals which had fallen into decay. The two which are comprised by my illustration, one on either side of the alcove, represent on the left hand the figure of Hoseyn Khan Sirdar, and, on the right, the Persian hero Feramez. Of the remainder, three are portraits—Fath Ali, Shah of Persia (1797–1834), his son Abbas Mirza and Hasan Khan, brother to the Sirdar Hoseyn; while an equal number are indifferent renderings of heroic personages—the warriors Sherab and Rustem, and a Persian Amazon. One of my predecessors has recorded that at the time of his visit in 1834 the panels in the alcove were adorned with four pictures setting forth subjects which were well conceived to amuse the fancy of an old debauchee. A Mussulman was receiving wine from a fair Georgian in the presence of the monks of Edgmiatsin, whose arguments had been less potent to effect his conversion than the fleshly charms of the Christian girl. A Persian beauty in loose trousers and diaphanous upper garment was making her obeisance to the Shah. Here a prince of the blood royal in costume of the chase dallied with a maiden while her aged father lay asleep; there the beautiful features of Joseph spread havoc among the assembled ladies at the house of the wife of Potiphar.13 These various incitements to delight no longer grace the forlorn kiosque, and perhaps their disappearance is no great loss to the world of art. The original decoration, which is quite intact, upon the walls and ceiling enables us to judge how great had been the artistic decadence of Persia since her painters displayed their skill upon the walls of the Chehel Situn, the noble pavilion on the banks of the Zenda Rud.