"Alexander Visits the Sage Plato in his Mountain Cave", Folio from a K

A Persian painting shows two men seated within a rocky cave on a mountainside, while a group of riders, attendants and a dog gather on the slope below. Dense Persian verse in black ink fills the upper panel, framed by gold-ruled borders and a painted landscape.

Look closer: A small dog sits in the lower left foreground near the rocks, easy to overlook among the figures.

Artist

Amir Khusrau Dihlavi

Date

1597–98

Medium

Main support: Ink, opaque watercolor, gold on paperg Margins: Gold on dyed paper

Source

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Size

2565 × 3764 px

Credit (appreciated, not required for public-domain works): The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Alexander Smith Cochran, 1913