Ornamental brush drawings with lush foliage bearing a variety of human figures, animals, masks, heads, and often, though not here, mythological beasts first appeared in the Jalayrid court in the late fourteenth century. The genre flourished in the Timurid period in Herat when this drawing appears to have been made, as indicated by the figure style. The tradition later made its way to the Ottoman court in Istanbul where it continued with exceptional vigor. While all of them rely on a strongly calligraphic basis for the design, those of the Timurid period were executed with particular finesse.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Decorative Drawing
Date:first half 15th century
Geography:Attributed to present-day Afghanistan, Herat
Medium:Ink, watercolor, and gold on paper
Dimensions:H. 5 1/2 in. (14 cm) W. 4 in. (10.2 cm)
Classification:Codices
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1941
Accession Number:41.46
Decorative Drawing
Decorative designs have a long tradition in Persian art, beginning in the second half of the fourteenth century with the Jalayirid dynasty, continuing through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries under the Timurid, Turkomen, and Safavid dynasties, and migrating as well to Ottoman Turkey in the sixteenth century.[1] The type does not appear in painting, although some are tinted, and tend, as here, to be particularly "calligraphic" in their use of bold curving lines. They are prone to abound in a variety of animal, bird (real and mythological) and, less frequently, human forms (figure 9 in this volume, The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, M.386.14). Some of the forms — such as the goat or antelope head growing out of a stem near the top center or the lion mask, slightly lower near the left margin — are related to the so-called vaq-vaq design. This design with animal and human heads in various arabesque scrolls (allegedly evolving out of the story of Alexander and the talking tree) goes at least as far back as the early twelfth century.[2]
In this drawing the remainder of the human and animal forms are hidden behind the foliage rather than growing out of it. In spite of its small size, and even with the damage to the center portion, there are eleven animals or animal heads, two dragons, ten birds and two bird heads, and seven human faces or parts of figures in the drawing. It is possible that these drawings were more than purely decorative and had mystical overtones.[3] Some of them, as here, are hard to orient since the figures appear in varied positions among the foliage. The missing center design may have provided an obvious answer to the primary visual direction of the composition.
Many of the drawings seem to have been patterns or models to be copied in other media, such as embroideries, ceramics, and bookbindings, and have a variety of shapes.[4] Stylistically related to this drawing and others like it, first appearing under the Jalayirid but not found after the Timurid period, are a group more narrative in subject matter (figure 10 in this volume, Collection Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, IR.M.7). They too appear only as drawings. They are equally dense, and lively to the point of intensity. This parallel group, however, lacks the pronounced calligraphic lines of the decorative drawings, but was probably a simultaneous development.
[Swietochowski and Babaie 1989]
Footnotes:
1. Most of these drawings are found in the Istanbul albums, Hazine 2152,2153,2160, and also in the Diez Album, see Ipşiroglu, M. S. Saray-Alben: Diez'sche Klebebände aus den Berliner Sammlungen. Wiesbaden, 1964.
2. The design appears on a marble slab in Ghazna, probably associated with Mas'ud III (r. 1099–1115).
3. See, for example, a drawing in the Fogg Art Museum, ca. 1650; Anthony Welch. Shah 'Abbas and the Arts of Isfahan. Exhibition catalogue. The Asia Society. New York, 1973, fig. 59.
4. For a cloud-collar shape, see M. S. Saray-Alben: Diez'sche Klebebände aus den Berliner Sammlungen. Wiesbaden, 1964, pI. XXXV, fig. 47. See also Gray, Basil. "Some Chinoiserie Drawings and Their Origin." Forschungen zur Kunst Asiens in Memoriam Kurt Erdmann. Istanbul, 1969, pp. 159–71; and Lentz, T. W., and G. D. Lowry. Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century. Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., 1989, pp. 189–200.
[ Dikran G. Kelekian (American, born Turkey), New York, until 1941; sold to MMA]
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Persian Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 13–December 31, 1989, no. 1.
Swietochowski, Marie, and Sussan Babaie. Persian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989. no. 1, pp. 12–13, ill. pl. 1 (b/w).
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