Comparative Approach to the Relationship Between Text and Hand Visual Language in Tahmasebi’s Shahnameh Pictures

The painters of Tahmasbi Shahnameh, in order to depict the text full of the story of Shahnameh, tried to convey emotions and excitement to the audience by using the visual language of the hand. Due to the multiplicity of applications of this type of nonverbal communication in different situations, the painter may have undergone changes in parts of her painting under the influence of various factors, such as court order, which is not consistent with the text of the story. The main question in this article was: In presenting the message of the story through the visual language of the hand, what descriptions and shapes have the painters of Shahnameh Tahmasebi chosen to display the text with hand gestures, and how faithful they have been to the text of the book in this way? And the sub-question of the article is: why in some paintings the visual language of “hand” is exaggerated? The main purpose of this research is to identify the painting skills of Tahmasbi Shahnameh artists in using visual hand language and their level of attention to the text. Understanding the creativity in past Iranian painting doubles the importance of this research. This research has been done in a descriptive analytical way, an analysis based on the application of data and based on the images in the Shahnameh through library resources. The results of the study showed that the painters of Tahmasebi’s Shahnameh used hand movements in their paintings to show the emotional scenes of the story, such as victory and defeat, sorrow and regret, dance, surprise and waiting and in this way, they try to arouse the emotions of the reader to get her involved in emotional issues. They have creatively used non-verbal communication to display the text and have succeeded in representing the story and part of the culture of their time. They used it in emotions and repetition in their paintings, and in this way, they presented another part of the ritual of their period in the form of showing the correlation between poetry and painting.