On my No. 1 son’s suggestion, a short while ago I ordered from Amazon a selection from Mas’udi’s The Meadows of Gold,[1] one of his two surviving books. A great traveler of his times, he was born in Baghdad around 890 and died in Egypt in 956. Today the slim volume arrived by post. As soon as I opened it, I found a wonderful story about painting in China.[2] When a painter completes a painting he considers unsurpassable, he brings it to the king’s palace, where it is exhibited for an entire year for everyone to judge. If no fault is found with it in this period, the king grants the painter a reward and admits him into the company of his artists. One painter brought to the king a painting of an ear of wheat with a sparrow perched on it. It was of such perfection that the beholder really thought it was an ear of wheat with a sparrow perched on it. But a hunchback passing by found a flaw with the painting. Together with the artist, he was brought to the king’s presence. “Everyone knows,” he said when he was asked about the fault of the painting, “that a sparrow cannot settle on an ear of wheat without bending it, but the painter has shown the ear straight.” The hunchback’s complaint was considered fair, and the artist got no reward. And Mas’udi concludes: “Their objective in doing this and similar things is to put the artist on their mettle and force them to take infinite care and pains, and to make them reflect at length on the execution of works they undertake.”[3] Wonderful. As was my No. 1 son’s suggestion.

Footnotes

1. London: Penguin, 2007.

2. Op. cit., pp. 113-114.

3. Op. cit., p. 114.