A Ceramic Panel from Ottoman Aleppo (original) (raw)
Related papers
2016
The symbolism of the encircling serpent-dragon holding its own tail in the mouth was traditionally known by its Greek name as ourobóros. By tracing its transfer and transformation from late antiquity to the medieval Islamic period, this paper discusses the specific cosmogonic and cosmological development and context within which this motif is embedded in the Western Central Asia region. By reviewing hypotheses concerning the iconography and iconology of the symbolism, it examines the circular serpent-dragon’s astrological, magical or alchemical associations, related abstract notions such as eternity, union and infinity as well as aspects of its prosopography. Particularly noteworthy is its geographic link with the outermost boundary of the visible world, for the world-encircling ourobóros is known to mark the boundary between the inhabited world and the waters that surround it, thus between order and chaos around it; thereby appearing as exponent of liminality situated upon the ambiguous dividing line between the divine and the demonic, its manifestly dual nature confers on the ourobóros an intermediate status. The paper moreover examines the iconographical and iconological transformation of the single encircling serpent-dragon of pre-Islamic tradition into the doubled ourobóros in medieval Islamic iconography represented as paired interlaced circular serpent-dragons.
Decorated Walls, Description, and Cultural Memory between Byzantium, Persia, and Early Islam
Convivium 8.2, 2021
Very few wall mosaics or paintings survive intact from the early Byzantine buildings of the eastern Mediterranean. This material gap has complicated our understanding of the images that appeared on the walls of palaces and churches, and the ways in which different groups of viewers responded to them. Thankfully, texts help supplement the corpus of decorated walls. Two ninth-century texts, the Arabic poem “Īwān Kisrā” (“Palace of Khusro”) by the Abbasid poet al-Buḥturī (d. 897 C.E.) and the Greek Letter of the Three Patriarchs to the Emperor Theophilos (mid-ninth century), have been omitted from the discussion, and expand our idea of what kinds of images Byzantine, Persian, and later, Umayyad and Abbasid viewers might have seen in their spaces of worship and of rule. These descriptions, of painted or mosaic images of a battle between the Byzantine and Sasanian Persian armies at the Persian palace at Ctesiphon, and of Christ’s nativity at the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem, showcase the ability of wall decoration to speak to viewers from a range of cultural backgrounds: at Ctesiphon, the Abbasid speaker in al-Buḥturī’s poem encounters a Persian mosaic, while at Bethlehem, invading Persian soldiers confront an image of their ancestors, the Three Magi, on a Christian church. By considering these texts against other descriptions of works of art from the period, as well as extant images, this article supplements current understandings of the artistic encounters, and the wider relationship, between Persia, Byzantium, and the early Islamic caliphates. More broadly, the article opens up questions of receptions of monumental works of art in the early medieval period, as well as the role of images as sites of cultural memory. Works of narrative art such as those described by al-Buhturi and the Letter of the Three Patriarchs could prompt potent reactions from viewers from different cultures, allowing them to communicate and even shape their cultural and religious identities through contact with images from other traditions. The presence of images in these two texts not only broadens our knowledge of the types of wall mosaics and paintings that existed, it also encourages us to widen our view of the audiences of medieval works of monumental art.
In: Symposia Iranica, Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, 11–12 April 2017, Cambridge. 2017. The pictorial representation of architectural structures fundamentally shaped the aesthetics of a great many Persianate and Ottoman book illustrations. Facilitated by a cultural, literal and architectural connectivity, acquisitions of Persianate manuscripts and the mobility of Persian painters into the Ottoman court workshop, the formative period of Ottoman book painting was marked by an inspiration from the Persianate idiom and style. This paper will demonstrate, using selected examples, how the compositional layout of the buildings and settings portrayed, their architectural form and elements, the decorative repertoire in the revetment of the façades and dados, and the visual means of their pictorial representation, evidence continuity in a considerable number of early Ottoman book illustrations. An 'autonomous' Ottoman approach developed in the second half of the 16th century and some of these Persianate models vanished. However, many were emulated and appropriated, eventually undergoing gradual alterations over the course of time, but remaining as a long-lasting vestige of the Persianate actuality in Ottoman book painting.
Tradition and Transformation in Ancient Egypt, 2018
Abstract: This study explores the question of innovation and new pictorial resources in New Kingdom art, especially in the 18th and 19th Dynasty private Theban tombs, which seem to have been a more convenient context for artists’ innovations, where they explored new possibilities. A good example may be the transgression of some Egyptian ‘rules’ of display which artists have followed over centuries, such as the attempts to create depth and perspective in the composition. Frontal Images are also an example of the emancipation from Egyptian ‘rules’ of display, attested in human figures and animals. In this research focussed on innovation, I have paid special attention to the frontal poses of animals, such as the cats represented under the seats of their owners in tomb scenes, or the frontal dogs shown in the popular desert hunt scenes. These hunting dogs shown en face, sometimes even in a twisted pose, reflect a ‘break’ of the movement of animals, being attested in several private Theban tombs. I believe this type of animal frontal poses could have worked as ‘visual hooks’, calling the attention of the viewer to particular details. It is difficult to say if these innovations are just a self-developed process within the Theban workshops, or if they are the result of artistic foreign influence. We must bear in mind that it was a period of intense contact with the world abroad, when foreign objects displaying new motifs and poses arrived to Egypt, and were appreciated by the elite. In fact, frontal poses in animal depictions are also attested in wooden boxes of NK date or even in objects from the royal sphere, such as pieces from the funerary equipment of the tomb of Tutankhamun, maybe reflecting the so called ‘International Style’ of the 14th century BC, in which iconographic elements and idioms passed between Egypt, the Aegean and the Near East. The most skilled artists could be inspired by foreign iconography and poses when decorating the NK private Theban tombs.