Day of Judgment, folio from a manuscript of the Falnama (Book of Omens)

Unknown artist

c. 1555

Opaque watercolor and gold on paper

Arthur M. Sackler Museum

A scene depicts figures in flames and a crowd of people, with winged figures holding scales and a central tree. This folio belongs to a now-dispersed pictorial falnama (book of omens), probably created for Shah Tahmasp. To use a pictorial falnama, the seeker opened the codex randomly to a double-page spread that featured an image on one page and a self-contained text on the other. Interpreted together in light of the query, the image and text communicated the prediction. Keenly interested in divinatory practices, Tahmasp is known to have engaged in prognostication for the women of his court. The painting illustrates the day of judgment. The inscriptions in a later hand help explicate this painting’s complex iconography. The three winged figur