Kneeling on the back of a lion, a winged spirit (peri) holds a solar disc aloft. Like the beaming sun, the peri smiles serenely, guiding the lion with a serpent for reins. The lion’s body consists of intertwined humans, animals, and monsters. Far from an inchoate mass, these figures form an interlocking pattern, designed to fit precisely within the contours of the cosmic animal, which symbolizes the constellation Leo.
Sun in Leo; a peri holding an effigy of the sun rides a composite lion, Kashmir, third quarter of the eighteenth century, MS M.787. Purchased from Demotte and Company, New York, through Herbert P. Weissberger, 1935.