The study of Islam­ic cal­lig­ra­phy is “almost inex­haustible,” begins Ger­man-born Har­vard pro­fes­sor Annemarie Schim­mel’s Cal­lig­ra­phy and Islam­ic Cul­ture, “giv­en the var­i­ous types of Ara­bic script and the exten­sion of Islam­ic cul­ture” through­out the Ara­bi­an Penin­su­la, Per­sia, Africa, and the Ottoman Empire. The first cal­li­graph­ic script, called Ḥijāzī, alleged­ly orig­i­nat­ed in the Hijaz region, birth­place of the Prophet Muham­mad him­self. Anoth­er ver­sion called Kūfī, “one of the ear­li­est extant Islam­ic scripts,” devel­oped and flour­ished in the “Abbasid Bagh­dad,” Anchi Hoh writes for the Library of Con­gress, “a major cen­ter of cul­ture and learn­ing dur­ing the clas­si­cal Islam­ic age.”

Despite the long and ven­er­a­ble his­to­ry of cal­lig­ra­phy around the Islam­ic world, there is good rea­son for the say­ing that the Qur’an was “revealed in Mec­ca, recit­ed in Egypt, and writ­ten in Istan­bul.” The Ottomans refined Ara­bic cal­lig­ra­phy to its high­est degree, bring­ing the art into a “gold­en age… unknown since the Abbasid era,” Hoh writes.

“Ottoman cal­lig­ra­phers adopt­ed [mas­ter Abbasid cal­lig­ra­ph­er] Ibn Muqlah’s six styles and ele­vat­ed them to new peaks of beau­ty and ele­gance.” One of the peaks of this refine­ment can be seen here in these del­i­cate­ly pre­served dead leaves cov­ered with gold­en Ara­bic script.

This par­tic­u­lar appli­ca­tion of the art is, need­less to say, “dif­fi­cult and del­i­cate work,” say the notes on one such leaf in Sin­ga­pore’s Asian Civil­i­sa­tion Muse­um:

The leaf has to be dried, and the tis­sue has to be removed slow­ly so as to leave the skele­tal mem­brane. The sten­cil of the com­po­si­tion is placed behind the leaf and the gold ink with gum Ara­bic is applied over it. This art of pro­duc­ing cal­lig­ra­phy of a dried leaf, is one that was prac­tised most wide­ly in Ottoman Turkey dur­ing the 19th cen­tu­ry. Dur­ing this peri­od, Ottoman cal­lig­ra­phers were inter­est­ed in pro­duc­ing com­po­si­tions which took the shape of fruits, ani­mals and even inan­i­mate objects like ships and hous­es.

The exam­ples here come from a Twit­ter thread by Bayt Al Fann, an artist col­lec­tive “explor­ing art & cul­ture inspired by Islam­ic tra­di­tion.” There you can find many more elab­o­rate exam­ples and trans­la­tions and descrip­tions of the cal­li­graph­ic script — gen­er­al­ly vers­es from the Qur’an, Hadith prayers, and poet­ry. Learn much more about Islam­ic cal­lig­ra­phy in Schim­mel’s book; in her Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art bul­letin “Islam­ic Cal­lig­ra­phy” with Bar­bara Riv­ol­ta (free here); and in Hoh’s three-part Library of Con­gress series here. And find out how Turk­ish cal­lig­ra­phers like Nick Mer­denyan and Sal­i­ha Aktaş have rein­vent­ed the art in the 21st cen­tu­ry.…

via MetaFil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn Cal­lig­ra­phy from Lloyd Reynolds, the Teacher of Steve Jobs’ Own Famous­ly Inspir­ing Cal­lig­ra­phy Teacher

The Mod­el Book of Cal­lig­ra­phy (1561–1596): A Stun­ning­ly Detailed Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script Cre­at­ed over Three Decades

Free: Down­load Thou­sands of Ottoman-Era Pho­tographs That Have Been Dig­i­tized and Put Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

In the Nation­al Gallery there hangs a por­trait of an unknown woman, paint­ed by an unknown artist around 1470 some­where in south­west­ern Ger­many. This may sound like an art­work of lit­tle note, but it does boast one high­ly con­spic­u­ous mark of dis­tinc­tion: a house­fly. It’s not that the por­traitist was in such thrall to real­ism that he includ­ed an insect that hap­pened to drop into the sit­ting; at first glance, the fly looks as if it belongs to our real­i­ty, and has alight­ed on the can­vas itself.  Why would a painter, pre­sum­ably com­mis­sioned at the con­sid­er­able expense of the sit­ter’s fam­i­ly, include such a seem­ing­ly bizarre detail? Nation­al Gallery cura­tor Francesca Whitlum-Coop­er offers answers in the video below.

“It’s a joke,” says Whitlum-Coop­er. “And it’s a joke that works on dif­fer­ent lev­els, because on the one hand, the fly has been tricked into think­ing this is a real head­dress,” fooled by the painter’s mas­tery of that most dif­fi­cult col­or for light and shad­ow, white.

“But obvi­ous­ly there’s a dou­ble joke, because we, look­ing at it, think, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s a fly on that paint­ing!’ ” It is our very instinct to shoo the bug away that tells us “we’ve been duped, because actu­al­ly, every­thing here is two-dimen­sion­al. This is just paint. And the skill of the artist is that they’ve been able to take that paint, and brush, and a bit of wood, and con­jure it into some­thing that feels so life­like, we do believe — even just for a sec­ond — that’s a fly sit­ting on that pic­ture.”

Five cen­turies lat­er the joke still works, though it could well be more than a joke. One the­o­ry put forth here and there in the com­ments holds that the fly func­tions as a reminder of imper­ma­nence, of decay, of mor­tal­i­ty. If so, it sug­gests that the sub­ject of this por­trait may already have been dead by the time of its paint­ing, a notion sup­port­ed by the sym­bol­ic weight of the for­get-me-nots in her hand. (One com­menter even argues that the artist is none oth­er than the famed Albrecht Dür­er, and that the woman depict­ed is his late moth­er.) Though it may not rank among the great works of art, this mys­te­ri­ous image nev­er­the­less shares with them the qual­i­ty of mul­ti­va­lence. The fly could be a gag, and it could be a memen­to mori — but why not both?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

19th-Cen­tu­ry Skele­ton Alarm Clock Remind­ed Peo­ple Dai­ly of the Short­ness of Life: An Intro­duc­tion to the Memen­to Mori

A Restored Ver­meer Paint­ing Reveals a Por­trait of a Cupid Hid­den for Over 350 Years

What Made Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus a Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Paint­ing

The Genius of Albrecht Dür­er Revealed in Four Self-Por­traits

What Makes the Mona Lisa a Great Paint­ing: A Deep Dive

Down­load 35,000 Works of Art from the Nation­al Gallery, Includ­ing Mas­ter­pieces by Van Gogh, Gau­guin, Rem­brandt & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.