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Late Islamic Period: Art
Perhaps even more so than in
preceding periods, art was an instrument of dynastic
expression in this great age of empires. Spurred by royal
patronage, the arts flourished under the Ottomans and Safavids.
Ottoman military incursions into Iran in the later fifteenth century,
and throughout the sixteenth century, led to the appropriation of
artists, works of art, and artistic ideas. Ottoman decorative arts and
the arts of the book were thereby enriched by the
repertoire of floral and vegetal motifs first developed
in fifteenth-century Iran, generally referred to as the
international Timurid style.
In the sixteenth century
artists also willingly emigrated eastward from Iran to
India, bringing with them a style of book illustration
that contributed to the development of a new and
distinctive Mughal idiom. On many levels this was an
international period, in which Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal art
were each impacted by the aesthetic established in
fifteenth-century Iran.
Chinese pottery had long been admired,
collected, and emulated in the Islamic world, and this
was especially the case at the Ottoman and Safavid
courts, where two important collections of Chinese
blue-and-white porcelains were assembled. Such Chinese
porcelains influenced the style of Safavid pottery and
other decorative arts, but they had an especially strong
impact on the development of the Ottoman pottery known as
Iznik ware. Iznik ware takes its name from the
northwestern Anatolian city where much of this pottery
seems to have been made. Produced as architectural
revetment as well as tableware, Iznik pottery is one of
the most notable and renowned arts of the Ottoman period.
Sometime in the late
fifteenth century, in an attempt to approximate the
Chinese blue-and-white porcelain that was then popular,
Ottoman potters began to produce blue-and-white wares of
a type that was virtually unrivaled in Islamic ceramics.
These potters developed a hard, dense fritware body, which they covered with a
dazzling white slip in order to replicate the hard,
white body of the Chinese wares. Onto this white surface,
floral scrolls, arabesques, and other designs were
painted in a deep cobalt blue; this was then covered with
a colorless, shiny glaze.
A superb Iznik jar in the
collection belongs to a slightly later phase in the
development of Ottoman pottery, possibly the second
decade of the sixteenth century (fig.
44). The jar employs a lighter shade
of blue, along with the deep cobalt, for its dynamic
floral decoration inspired by Chinese designs. The
flowers are boldly painted on the white ground, or else,
as on the foot and shoulder, they are reserved in white
against blue. Jars of this type, which were made for
courtly or urban patrons and were most likely used as
storage containers, testify to the high aesthetic
standards of the day.
Beginning sometime in the 1540s Iznik
potters introduced manganese purple, sage green, and black to their
palette, while their decorative repertoire still focused on floral
designs such as pomegranates, rosettes, tulips, and artichokes. The latter two motifs form the main decoration at the center of a large dish in
LACMA's collection, where they are depicted in blue and green, while the
cavetto and rim bear green pomegranates alternating with blue sprays of
leaves or else tulips (fig. 45).
Toward the mid-sixteenth
century the color scheme of Iznik wares expanded to
include a brilliant red and a bright grass green. The magnificent tile
with sumptuous flowers and lower border painted to imitate breccia
marble likely comes from the royal living quarters at the Topkapi Saray, or Cannon-Gate Palace, Istanbul (fig.
46). Objects of this type, both vessels and tile revetment,
figure prominently in the museum’s collection. All
of these objects demonstrate the great variety of
ornament used in Iznik wares, including the ubiquitous tulip; lush,
plump peonies and carnations; and spiky and scrolling leaves, as well as
bold epigraphic ornament. They also help to illustrate the
different stylistic phases of Iznik wares, which in turn
reflect the evolution of Ottoman taste in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries in other media as well,
including metalwork, carpets, and textiles.
One type of decorative
motif associated with blue-and-white Iznik pottery
consists of slender spiral scrolls punctuated by
rosettes, semicircles, and comma-shaped leaves. This same
design is found in the illuminated background of the
elegant tugra, or imperial monogram, of Sulayman
the Magnificent, which is preserved in the museum’s
collection (fig.
47). The tugra, originally placed at the head of
a royal document, transforms the sultan’s name and
titles and the formula "ever victorious" into a
uniform and harmonious series of curved and vertical
lines, while the actual letters are stacked close
together in the lower portion. This tugra demonstrates the overwhelming concern for exquisite
detail that characterizes the art of Sulayman’s
reign in particular and Ottoman art in general.
Another work in the
collection, a richly embellished textile (fig.
48), gives a vivid sense of the
multihued opulence of Sulayman’s court. Possibly a
cushion cover for a throne or a sofa, the crimson satin
fabric is embroidered with silk, gold, and silver thread.
The bold blossoms and spiky leaves that typify the
Ottoman court style are arranged, along with a quartet of
lively roosters, around a complex eight-lobed medallion.
The quality of the design, the fine embroidery, and the
lavish use of silver and gold metallic thread demonstrate
the unrivaled level of excellence of sixteenth-century
Ottoman imperial textiles.
A drawing in the collection, whose
remarkable intricacy of line and detail belies its minute size, was
likely executed in the Ottoman court atelier (naqqashkhana) in
Istanbul (fig. 49). There, in the
second half of the sixteenth century, a distinct style of painting
developed separate from the highly conceptual tradition of manuscript
illustration. Known as the "saz style" after the reed pen employed in
its creation, this style (exemplified by the LACMA drawing) emphasized
fantastic and dazzling imagery that incorporates chinoiserie motifs and
feathery leaves. Here, concealed among the dense, bristly foliage, are
two silently slithering dragons, barely visible at first glance. Rather
than emphasizing pure line, the anonymous artist was caught up with the
textural qualities of the dragons' scaly, speckled bodies and the
sinuous veins of the serrated leaves.
Drawings of this type, accompanied by
Persian verses, were typically mounted and bound in albums that were
compiled for the Ottoman sultans and presented on special occasions.
Albums were likewise popular at the contemporary courts of Safavid Iran
and Mughal India. Larger than a book and with a different directional organization, albums combining a varied and skillfull mixture of
calligraphy, painting, and drawings could be contemplated and enjoyed by
a single royal user or by a small ensemble of courtiers. In the hands of
an artist, however, an album could serve as a source of study,
inspiration, and emulation. For example, sometime in the early
seventeenth century a mirror image copy of the LACMA drawing was made,
which is now preserved in the Louvre.
Luxury wooden objects – furniture and furnishings as well as architectural fittings inlaid with precious materials such as ivory, ebony, silver, gold, mother-of-pearl, and tortoiseshell – were produced in limited quantities for the Ottoman court beginning in the early sixteenth century. A rare and spectacular games board from the first half of the sixteenth century in LACMA’s collection provides a wonderful example of this medium (fig. 50). When open, it offers a backgammon board rendered in ivory and ebony inlays with details of silver and tiny mosaics; when closed, it provides two more gaming opportunities, including an ivory- and ebony-inlaid chess board.
By the second half of the sixteenth century Ottoman woodworkers had begun to employ inlays of mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell, two materials that are very hard to work with. The tortoiseshell was generally laid over metal foil to give it a lustrous quality, and mother-of-pearl plaques were frequently inlaid with black mastic to further emphasize their luminosity. Both techniques were used to enhance a boldly decorated box at LACMA (fig. 51), which, like other such surviving boxes, was likely intended to store a precious manuscript. The main decoration is of a type known as chinatamani, which was particularly associated with Ottoman court art. In this appealing design, three circles (sometimes accompanied by a double wavy line) are arranged to form an endless repeat pattern.
The military supremacy that had
helped make the Ottomans a world power was largely based on the highly
disciplined Janissary corps – crack infantry troops. As a part of
their uniform, the Janissaries wore a distinctive cap somewhat like a
stocking cap in appearance, to which was affixed just above the forehead
an ornament such as the rare silver gilt example in LACMA's collection
(fig. 52). This slightly concave
device, decorated with delicately worked geometric designs, would have
held an insignia demonstrating the Janissary's loyalty to the Sultan – most
likely a spoon, signifying that it was the ruler who provided him with
his daily soup.
High court art under the
early Safavids is perhaps best exemplified by manuscript
illustration. The museum’s collection includes a
painting (fig.
53) from a manuscript whose size, scale, and
quality make it one of the most luxurious Islamic books
ever created. This now-dispersed copy of the Shahnama was made for Shah Tahmasp (r.
1524–76) in Tabriz, the Safavid capital. The
manuscript originally included 258 illustrations,
innumerable illuminations, and more than one thousand
pages of text, all with gold-flecked borders. A book of
this magnitude would have taken several years to
complete, perhaps even a decade or longer, and the
manuscript is generally believed to have been executed
between 1522 and 1535. Its numerous illustrations display
a diversity of compositional types and styles, many of
them derived from later fifteenth-century painting.
Using formalized
conventions, the museum’s illustration Nushirvan
Receives an Embassy from the Khaqan depicts a type
of idealized world first perfected in Persian painting
more than a century earlier. Here the rich colors of the
costumes and the architectural decoration, the sedate
poses of the figures, and the carefully contrived
landscape and gold sky create a most suitable, if unreal,
setting for this royal audience.
LACMA’s collection includes a page from another dispersed royal Safavid manuscript of the Shahnama (fig. 54), produced for Shah Isma‘il II (r. 1576 –77) in Qazwin, then the capital of Iran. The painting depicts the contest between the shah Khusraw Parviz, and Bahram Chubina, a would-be usurper, who would soon be defeated with the aid of the Byzantine army. It bears a contemporary attribution to the artist cAli Asghar, whose son Riza-yi cAbbasi was the foremost painter of the seventeenth century (see fig. 55).
These Shahnama manuscripts were the result of a collaborative effort, one that
required wealthy, generally royal, patrons, who could
afford the costly materials and large staff required.
Such manuscripts were produced in the kitab khana (literally, "book house"), a royal atelier
combining the functions of scriptorium, workshop, and
library. There, under the supervision of a director,
manuscripts were selected to be copied and illustrated,
and the work was distributed among the various artists
and craftsmen, including calligraphers, painters,
designers, gilders, and bookbinders. It is important to
bear in mind that the manuscript was created and
understood as a complete work of art; the paintings,
calligraphy, binding, and other components formed
beautiful but constituent parts of a greater whole.
Paper was naturally an
important element in the making of a manuscript.
Papermaking was introduced to the Islamic world from
China in the mid-eighth century. By the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, the apogee of illustrated manuscript
production in Iran, the technique of papermaking (from
flax and occasionally hemp) had become quite
sophisticated, allowing for the manufacture of sizable
sheets of paper, as large as three feet across.
The layout of the
manuscript was another significant element, one that was
determined before pen and ink touched paper, including
the number of lines per page, where to insert chapter
headings (which were often richly illuminated or
decorated), and where in the text to place the
illustrations. Next, lines had to be ruled for the
calligrapher, who copied the text and left appropriate
spaces for paintings and illuminations. The calligrapher
wrote with a reed pen and ink that he prepared himself,
generally a mixture of lampblack (or soot), water, and a
binding medium such as gum arabic. Since the most
frequently copied Persian texts were written in verse,
the two halves of the couplets were generally divided
into columns of text, as many as six per page.
After the text was copied,
certain sections – the opening pages, the beginning of
each chapter, and the closing page – were often
elaborately decorated, usually with strictly symmetrical
compositions of delicate vegetal and abstract designs,
which enclose and sometimes even overwhelm the
calligraphy. Such illuminations, which are often
brilliantly embellished with gold, were the work of
specialized artists such as the designer and the gilder.
This type of lavish illumination is a standard feature of
luxury manuscripts and one of the glories of Islamic arts of
the book.
The painters who
illustrated the text began their work with an
underdrawing or sketch. Next, using fine brushes,
preferably made from the fur of long-haired cats that
were bred for this purpose, they applied opaque,
jewel-like colors in a remarkable array of hues. The
artists prepared their own pigments, of which the finest
were made from minerals, including lapis lazuli for blue,
cinnabar for red, and malachite for green. These were
finely ground and mixed with a binding medium such as
albumen. Gold or silver, which was also used, was pounded
into leaf and then liquefied and mixed with a binding
medium. Unfinished paintings show that the colors were
set down in stages: gold, used for the sky, and silver,
for water, were applied first. These were followed by the
landscape colors, and then details – such as flowers,
facial features, elements of costume, and
architecture – and finally touches of gold were
added.
The last step in the
making of a manuscript was to gather and sew the pages
into a binding. Ornamented with stamped, painted, and
gilt decoration, the leather binding enveloped the
manuscript like a decorative skin. Such elaborately
produced books were clearly worthy vehicles for royal
patronage. This use of an essentially private art form as
a dynamic expression of legitimacy and imperial prestige,
dating back to the Ilkhanid dynasty, spread elsewhere in the Islamic
world, most notably to Mughal India.
The collection includes
paintings from several other sixteenth-century
manuscripts that were produced in Shiraz or in Bukhara,
both important regional schools. By the late sixteenth
century single-page compositions, the work of one
individual, began to replace the collectively painted
manuscript, perhaps because even the wealthiest patrons
could scarcely afford lavishly illustrated books during
this period of economic decline in Iran. Court artists no
longer worked exclusively for imperial patrons, nor were
they tied to a royal atelier. Single-page paintings
remained in vogue even during the reign of Shah cAbbas,
who initiated a period of economic expansion and artistic
revival, sponsoring the production of some lavishly
illustrated manuscripts.
In the new style of
painting that developed at Shah cAbbas’s
court in Isfahan, portraiture was paramount. More generic
representations than exacting likenesses, such portraits
depicted not only sophisticated and refined courtly
figures but a variety of other types as well, including
mendicants, soldiers, foreigners, and peasants. By the
mid-seventeenth century, translucent washes of color
applied over drawings, emphasizing boldly calligraphic
lines, had replaced the rich opaque colors previously
favored. Compared with earlier periods in Iran, the late
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries produced numerous
signed and dated works, and the names of artists were
preserved in contemporary literary sources. The
museum’s collection is especially strong in
seventeenth-century painting and drawing from Isfahan in
the form of elegant single-page compositions that depict
a broad spectrum of Safavid society. These pages would
have been bound in albums along with calligraphic
compositions. One such work, a tinted drawing of a man
with a pitchfork (fig.
55), is inscribed with the name Riza-yi cAbbasi
and dated 4th of Safar A.H. 1044 (July 11th,
A.D. 1634). Riza-yi cAbbasi (d. 1635) was one
of the most outstanding and prolific artists in the
history of Persian painting. As the preeminent painter at
Shah cAbbas’s court, he was awarded the
sobriquet cAbbasi.
Although many paintings
and drawings are inscribed with Riza’s name, not all
of them are by the hand of the master. At times they may
be entirely or partially the work of one of his students.
This may be the case with the Los Angeles drawing, which
was perhaps begun by Riza but completed by his son and
student, to whom he inscribed the piece. The fur lining of the man’s coat lacks the fine, downy texture
(produced by hundreds of tiny brush strokes) that
characterizes Riza’s undisputed works. Nonetheless,
the eccentric subject matter – a well-dressed man
carrying a gardener’s tool – the emphasis on line
over color, and the accentuation of the curved contours
of the clothed figure to impart a sense of movement are
features typical of Riza’s manner, which took hold
in seventeenth-century Isfahan.
The most important and enduring symbol of the empire’s return to prosperity
under Shah cAbbas was his capital, the new
city of Isfahan, with the great Maydan-i Shah, or Royal
Square, as its focal point. In addition to the mosques,
public buildings, and palaces constructed around the
Maydan, numerous other edifices were erected in Isfahan
and its environs to house and serve this cosmopolitan
capital’s growing population, which included
significant Jewish and Armenian communities.
Like the royal buildings
on the great Maydan, palaces and mansions constructed
nearby or elsewhere in the city were lavishly sheathed
with tiles. The collection includes several examples of
such tile revetment, decorated in the cuerda seca technique. An innovation of this
period, found in palaces and other structures (excluding mosques), was the use of individually painted square
tiles that were combined to form a larger pictorial
scene. This is demonstrated by a tile panel, perhaps from
the mid-seventeenth century, which forms half of a pair of spandrels that once were set above a doorway or arch (fig.
56). Here, amid a tranquil floral
landscape filled with birds, a lion attacks a stag, a
motif that can perhaps be interpreted as a visualization
of a contemporary poetic metaphor for the arrival of
spring.
In the early seventeenth
century Shah cAbbas donated the great imperial
collection of Chinese porcelains to his ancestral shrine
at Ardabil in Northwestern Iran. The size,
scope, and quality of this gift attest to the strong
taste in Iran for imported Chinese blue-and-white
porcelains, which had had an impact on indigenous Iranian
pottery, as well as other decorative arts, since the
fourteenth century. cAbbas’s gift may
have encouraged a new wave of seventeenth-century
imported Chinese porcelains, which in turn inspired
Safavid potters to emulate the blue-and-white wares. A
distinctive blue-and-white pouring vessel in the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art (fig.
57) very likely belongs to the second half of
the seventeenth century, a period when only the
decoration and not the shape of Iranian ceramic wares was
influenced by Chinese prototypes. The floral blossoms and
lively flying birds, and the stylized bridges spanning
rocks above the foot, mimic the Chinese wares, while the
specific shape, with curvaceous body and long spout, is
borrowed from late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century
Iranian metalwork. This elegant vessel demonstrates the
Islamic artist’s remarkable and characteristic
ability to imaginatively adapt and combine different
styles and forms, producing something completely new in
the process.
A somewhat less common type of ceramic
ware and one whose decoration avoided Far Eastern designs is
luster-painted pottery, which seems to have experienced a revival in Safavid Iran. Most of these objects – all vessels – are relatively
small in scale by comparison with earlier periods. Rather than
Chinese-inspired decoration, the luster wares bear delicate but densely
rendered floral designs and brief landscape vignettes with spiky-leafed
trees and occasionally birds and animals. The most notable such example
in LACMA's collection is a shallow dish whose coppery luster decoration
is dominated by a spiky-leaf tree perfectly configured to echo the
circular form of the vessel (fig. 58).
No discussion of Islamic
art, however brief, would be complete without some
mention of carpets, which are perhaps the best-known
Islamic art form throughout the world. Most famous of all
Islamic carpets are those from Iran. Because of their
fragile nature, it is only from the sixteenth century
onward that Persian carpets have survived in any
quantity, although woven carpets have a long history in
the Middle East. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is
fortunate to possess one of the most renowned Persian
carpets, the so-called Ardabil Carpet (fig.
59), whose better-known mate
is displayed in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.
Brought to England
sometime in the late nineteenth century, the carpets were
reported to have come from the Safavid shrine at Ardabil.
There is still a good deal of speculation about where and
for whom such sumptuous court carpets were commissioned.
The outer borders and a section of the lower field were
believed to have been removed from the carpet now in Los
Angeles in order to repair the one now in London. The Los
Angeles carpet was subsequently given a new outer border.
Apart from these differences, the two carpets are
virtually identical.
According to their dated
signatures, this matched pair of carpets were made in
1539–40 by a certain Maqsud of Kashan, who may have
been the designer who prepared the patterns and oversaw the project. Predominantly blue, red, and yellow,
the overall composition of the carpets – based on a central
medallion with radiating pendants, with quarter
medallions repeated in the corners – is ultimately
derived from contemporary and earlier bookbinding and
manuscript illumination, as is typical of many so-called
medallion carpets. The Ardabils, however, include a
unique design element in that lamps are depicted
projecting from the top and bottom of the central
medallion. Medallions and lamps are set against a dense
field of flowers that grow from scrolling leafy vines.
The Los Angeles Ardabil
and its pendant in London are exceptional works of art,
not only on account of their unique design and
well-preserved colors but also because each is signed and
dated. Inscribed just above the signature and date is a
Persian couplet from a ghazal, or ode, by the
renowned fourteenth-century lyrical poet Hafiz, whose
words heighten our appreciation even today:
I have
no refuge in this world other than thy threshold
My head has no resting place other than this doorway
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