A Sapiential Perspective on Foundational Elements of Visual Representation: Through the Lens of Fayz Kashani's Mystical Aesthetics and Its Application in the Analysis of Typographic Works

Allāmah Fayḍ Kāshānī, a luminary among Shīʿa scholars, distinguished himself through mastery of jurisprudence, theology, philosophy, mysticism, and ḥadīth. His corpus offers a comprehensive system of theoretical ʿirfān (gnosis), rooted in the teachings of the Quran and the Ahl al-Bayt, which expounds a cosmos saturated with the divine Names and their interrelations. In his treatise Al-Mashwaq, drawing upon Shabistarī’s Gulshan-i Rāz, he deciphers the sensory symbols recurrent in mystical poetry, devising a hermeneutic method applicable—through reinterpretation—to the analysis of visual artworks. Fayḍ employs both perceptual and qualitative aspects of symbols, correlating sensory forms with intelligible realities. From his mystical-aesthetic viewpoint, principles of visual art—composition, rhythm, colour—are, like symbolic motifs such as the cheek, tress, or wine-cup, susceptible to taʾwīl (esoteric interpretation) and refer to transcendent realities. Thus, repetition of lines in a poster recalls the rhythm of the beloved’s curls; a dot signifies the station of divine mystery; colour embodies the infusion of spirit; the eye manifests emotion and attraction; light reveals beauty and visibility; the contour of the face demarcates the visible and invisible; the cheek exemplifies perfect composition; and wine, inducing ecstasy, parallels the role of contrast or dominance in visual representation