Paint an artist prophet - Mani
I love painting fellow artists. I'm particularly interested in the prophet-painter Mani. He taught his universal philosophy via pictures and welcomed the illiterate, as well as having progressive views on women and slaves, and he was a vegetarian. His teachings were all-encompassing and he took ideas from Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism and his word spread from Turkey to China, all across Central Asia along the Silk Road. And of course, he was ahead of his time as mystics often are; he was killed and his religion died out with him. Or did it? If your religion dies, does the God of your religion die also?
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@Kathlyn Powell mmm same! And miniature painting goes hand in hand with poetry - of course they illustrated and painted as accompaniments to all sorts of texts but poetry and literature feature highly. To that list I would add Hafez, Nizami... and yes in terms of Chinese philosophers that I think pair well with miniatures and manuscript painting Zhuang Zi, Li Bai, Du Fu... and Coleridge!