Transtextual Reading of the Scene of Zulaikha's Request from Yusuf (Case Studies: the Chaste by Mahmoud Farshchiyan and Yusuf and the Potiphar's Wife by Guido Reni)

 
A part of the story of Yusuf has been narrated in Torah and in the Surah of the same name in the Qur'an, which describes the story love of a beautiful woman for a young man. Given the relative similarity of this story in the two scriptures, various illustrations have been created by illustrators.  In this research, two works from the scene of Zulaikha's request from Yusuf are studied; a painting by Mahmoud Farshchian based on Qur'anic verses called Chaste, and the painting of Yusuf and the Potiphar's wife by Guido Reni, based on the story of Joseph the Prophet in the Torah. The research questions are: what effects can pre-texts have on hypertextual in portraying a scene by two different artists? What are the similarities and differences in the paintings of Zulaikha's request from Yusuf with different pre-texts?  The main purpose of the research is to study the factors of the Metatextuals such as texture and the cultural and religious pre-textual elements of the internal factors in similar visual systems of narration to find a better understanding of the deep structures of these paintings and the degree of convergence and their correlation by studying these cases. Therefore, using the descriptive-analytical method and with the transtextual and hypertextual approach, various factors in painters' obtaining from this story and its different representations in their works have been investigated.
In two different but equally thematic works and discovering the underlying layers of the work and the transition from hypertextual to pre-text (religious text) and intra-disciplinary pre-text (Baroque and Iranian painting style) cultural symbols and indicative elements at the time of the narrative place, the painters received different works and distinctions in their work. One of the important factors of this distinction is the difference in the narrative of two religious texts, one in the Qur'an and the other in the Torah, as well as the cultural and artistic differences in the style of each of the authors, which also influence the audience's reception of the artwork. There are differences between the visual representations of the single text, but the details of the works of the two artists appear to have been more closely scrutinized by the Iranian painter, including the symbols of ancient Egypt which represents the time, location and the narration. Zulaikha’s face has been drawn purely Egyptian and one of the reasons for using different elements and images in the space is the use of an Iranian spaceship that the artist has used well to portray the narrative better, but the Italian painter Guido Reni’s painting is simply European and there is no Egyptian symbol in the work, and painting completely follows baroque style using opposite colors.
According to the pre-texts, the Qur'an and the Torah, we found that the story of Yusuf and Zulaikha is more detailed in the Qur'an, but is briefly mentioned in the Torah. Another major distinction between the two paintings is the difference of each painter’s painting style, one drawn with Iranian painting style full of space and detail and the other with Baroque style with simple spatialization and the use of light and contrasting colors without details. After differentiating these two works, there is the difference between narrative in the pre-texts, the cultural differences, the differences in the style of painting and the differences in the perceptions of each artist and their imagination. Thus, every text preserves the tradition and cultural heritage of its predecessors, and the texts are part of an interconnected chain whose authors preserve and display the influence of earlier texts by preserving the contemporary context. The results of the study indicate that although the paintings have a common theme, because of the differences in the hypertextual factors, the cultural and artistic pretexts and the difference in narration in the two pretexts, the Qur'an and the Torah, the effect on artists is seen from different imaginative perspectives in their recreations.