"The Feast of Sada", Folio 22v from the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Shah Tahmasp

Painted in Tabriz around 1525, this was never meant to be seen on its own. It is one page out of 759 in a Book of Kings made for the young Shah Tahmasp, and it belongs to the poem's mythical reigns. King Hushang throws a stone at a snake, misses, and the spark struck off the rock gives the world fire. He holds a feast, and that feast, Sada, is what the page is named for. Sultan Muhammad, who ran the royal workshop and is credited with this painting, put more animals than courtiers on the hillside, a nod to Hushang as the king who first tamed them. In 1568 Tahmasp sent the finished manuscript to the Ottoman sultan Selim II on his accession. It stayed a book until the 1970s, when its American owner took it apart. The Met holds 78 of its paintings. The last 118 went to Tehran in 1994, traded for one painting by Willem de Kooning.