Nan va Halva (Breads and Sweets)
The text of this book is a series of moralizing poems on the merits of the ascetic life, three of which are illustrated. This painting illustrates the parable of a recluse who accepts bread from an infidel (depicted here as the English monarch Charles II) and is chided by a dog. The beautiful birds in the margin of the page compete for attention with the witty illustration. Another painting illustrating this poem shows the recluse praying in the wilderness. A third painting accompanies a poem on the regrets of a life spent learning useless information; the artist has shown a school where only the sciences are taught, its teachers dozing, meditating and drinking.
