AP Art History Chapter 10 Notes PDF

Preview

Summary

Gardner's Art through the Ages Chapter 10 Lecture, Patricia Morchel...

Description

Chapter Intro - In the Middle East and North Africa, Islamic art largely replaced Late Antique art. In India, the establishment of Muslim rule at Delhi in the early 13th century brought Islamic art and architecture to South Asia - The Taj Mahal at Agra is an Islamic mausoleum - Mezquita - Great Mosque - The jewel of the capital at Córdoba - Maqsura: In some mosques, a screened area in front of the mihrab reserved for a ruler Early Islamic Art - The religion of Islam arose in Arabia early in the seventh century, after the Prophet Muhammad began to receive God’s revelations - That Islam endured in the lands Muhammad’s successors conquered can be explained only by the nature of the Islamic faith and its appeal to millions of converts - Muhammad, revered by Muslims as the Final Prophet in the line including Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, was a native of Mecca on the west coast of Arabia - Hijra: The flight of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina in 622, the year from which Islam dates its beginnings - Medina: the city of the prophet - Kaaba: Arabic, “cube.” A small cubical building in Mecca, the Islamic world’s symbolic center - Koran: means recitations, the name of Islam’s sacred book, composed of surahs (chapters) divided into verses - Hadith: The words and exemplary deeds of the Prophet Muhammad - Sunnah: The collection of the Prophet Muhammad’s moral sayings and descriptions of his deeds - Muslims think of their religion as a continuation, a completion, and in some sense a reformation of those other great monotheisms - Caliphs: Islamic rulers, regarded as successors of Muhammad Architecture - During the early centuries of Islamic history, the Muslim world’s political and cultural center was the Fertile Crescent of ancient Mesopotamia - Miraj: The ascension of the Prophet Muhammad to Heaven - Dome of the Rock - Jerusalem - marked the coming of the new religion to the city that had been, and still is, sacred to both Jews and Christians - Abd al-Malik built the Dome of the Rock to mark the triumph of Islam in Jerusalem on a site sacred to Muslims, Christians, and Jews - The shrine takes the form of an octagon with a towering dome

-

-

-

-

-

On the interior of the Dome of the Rock, the original mosaics are largely intact At the center of the rotunda is the rocky outcropping later associated with Adam, Abraham, and Muhammad - the Dome of the Rock is firmly in the Late Antique tradition of the Mediterranean world Arcades: A series of arches supported by piers or columns Minarets: A distinctive feature of mosque architecture, a tower from which the faithful are called to worship Mihrab: A semicircular niche set into the qibla wall of a mosque Minbar: In a mosque, the pulpit on which the imam stands Great Mosque - owes much to Roman and Early Christian architecture - The Islamic builders incorporated stone blocks, columns, and capitals salvaged from the earlier structures on the land acquired by al-Walid - synthesizes elements received from other cultures into a novel architectural unity - The Umayyads constructed Damascus’s Great Mosque after they transferred their capital from Mecca in 661 - Is a hypostyle mosque with forecourt and columnar prayer hall. The plan most closely resembles the layout of Muhammad’s house in Medina Qibla: The direction (toward Mecca) Muslims face when praying Imam: In Islam, the leader of collective worship Mosque: The Islamic building for collective worship. From the Arabic word masjid, meaning a “place for bowing down.” Congregational Mosque: A city’s main mosque, designed to accommodate the entire Muslim population for the Friday noonday prayer. Also called the great mosque or Friday mosque Mihrab: A semicircular niche set into the qibla wall of a mosque Hypostyle Halls: A hall with a roof supported by columns Iwans: In Islamic architecture, a vaulted rectangular recess opening onto a courtyard Malviya Minaret - The unique spiral Malviya (snail shell) Minaret of Samarra’s Great Mosque is more than 165 feet tall and can be seen from afar - It served to announce the presence of Islam in the Tigris Valley - The distinguishing feature of the brick tower is its stepped spiral ramp, which increases in slope from bottom to top Mausoleum of the Samanids - Bukhara - Monumental tombs were almost unknown in the early Islamic period - The Samanid mausoleum at Bukhara is one of the oldest - Its dome-on-cube form had a long afterlife in Islamic funerary architecture - Muhammad had been opposed to elaborate burials and instructed his followers to

bury him in a simple unmarked grave - Blind arcade: An arcade having no true openings, applied as decoration to a wall surface - Colonnette: A thin column - Prayer Hall of the Mezquita - Great Mosque - Córdoba was the capital of the Spanish Umayyad dynasty - In the Great Mosque’s hypostyle prayer hall, 36 piers and 514 columns support a unique series of double-tiered horseshoe-shaped arches - Detail of the Upper Zones of the East Gate of the Mezquita - The caliph al-Hakam II expanded and renovated Córdoba’s Mezquita - The new gates to the complex feature intricate surface patterns of overlapping horseshoe-shaped and multilobed arches - Tesserae: Greek, “cube.” A tiny stone or piece of glass cut to the desired shape and size for use in forming a mosaic - Maqsura of the Mezquita - Reserved for the caliph, the Maqsura of the Córdoba mosque connected the mosque to his palace - It is a prime example of Islamic experimentation with highly decorative multilobed arches - Dome in Front of the Mihrab of the Mezquita - The dome in front of the Córdoba mihrab rests on an octagonal base of arcuated squinches - Crisscrossing ribs form an intricate decorative pattern. Byzantine artists fashioned the mosaic ornamentation - Sultan: A Muslim ruler - Friday Mosque - the first mosque of hypostyle design - The typical Iranian mosque plan with four vaulted iwans and a courtyard was perhaps first used in the mosque Sultan Malik Shah I built in the late 11th century at his capital of Isfahan Luxury Arts - The furnishings of Islamic mosques and palaces reflect a love of sumptuous materials and rich decorative pattern - Muslim artisans artfully worked ivory, metal, wood, and glass into a great variety of objects for sacred spaces or the home - Because wood is scarce in most of the Islamic world, the kinds of furniture used in the West—beds, tables, and chairs—are rare in Muslim buildings - A room’s function can change simply by rearranging the carpets and cushions - Pyxides: A cylindrical container with a hemispherical lid - Pyxis of Al-Mughira - from Medina Al-Zahra

-

-

-

-

-

The royal workshops of Abd al-Rahman III produced luxurious objects such as this ivory pyxis decorated with hunting motifs and vine scrolls - It belonged to al-Mughira, the caliph’s younger son Ewer in the form of a Bird - SULAYMAN - Brass with silver and copper inlay - Signed and dated by its maker, this bird ewer resembles a freestanding statuette - The engraved decoration of the body combines natural feathers with abstract motifs and Arabic calligraphy Caligraphy: Greek, “beautiful writing.” Handwriting or penmanship, especially elegant writing as a decorative art Kufic: An early form of Arabic script, characterized by angularity, with the uprights forming almost right angles with the baseline Finial: A crowning ornament Koran Page with Beginning of Surah 18 - Ink and Gold on Vellum - The script used in the oldest-known Korans is the stately rectilinear Kufic - This page has five text lines and a palm-tree finial but characteristically does not include depictions of animals or humans Samarqand Ware - A type of Islamic pottery produced in Samarqand and Nishapur in which the ceramists formed the shape of the vessel from dark pink clay and then immersed it in a tub of white slip, over which they painted ornamental or calligraphic decoration and which they sealed with a transparent glaze before firing Dish with Arabic Proverb - Painted and Glazed Earthenware - An Arabic proverb in Kufic calligraphy is the sole decoration of this dish made for a cultured owner - It states that knowledge, although bitter at first taste, is ultimately sweeter than honey

Later Islamic Art - Isfahan fell to the Mongols in 1236, Baghdad in 1258, and Damascus in 1260 - Islamic art continued to flourish, however, and important new regional artistic centers emerged Architecture - Alhambra - “The Red” in Arabic - a huge palace-fortress constructed on a rocky spur at Granada by the Nasrids - Named for the rose color of the stone used for its walls and 23 towers - Palace of the Lions

-

-

-

-

-

-

Takes its name from its courtyard, which contains a fountain with 12 marble lions carrying a water basin on their backs - Colonnaded courtyards with fountains and statues have a long history in the Mediterranean world, especially in the houses and villas of the Roman Empire - The Alhambra’s lion fountain is an unusual instance of freestanding stone sculpture in the Islamic world, unthinkable in a sacred setting Court of the Lions - The Nasrid Palace of the Lions takes its name from the fountain in this courtyard, a rare Islamic example of stone sculpture - Interwoven abstract ornamentation and Arabic calligraphy cover the stucco walls - The Palace of the Lions is noteworthy also for its elaborate stucco ceilings Muqarnas: Stucco decorations of Islamic buildings in which stalactite-like forms break a structure’s solidity Muqarnas Dome - Hall of the Abencerrajes - The dome rests on an octagonal drum supported by squinches and pierced by eight pairs of windows, but its structure is difficult to discern because of the intricate carved stucco decoration - The prismatic forms reflect sunlight, creating the effect of a starry sky - The flickering light and shadows create the effect of a starry sky as the sun’s rays glide from window to window during the day Madrasa-mosque-mausoleum Complex of Sultan Hasan - Hasan’s mausoleum is a gigantic version of the earlier Samanid mausoleum - Because of its location south of the complex’s mosque, praying Muslims faced the Mamluk sultan’s tomb The Ottoman emperors were lavish patrons of architecture, and the builders in their employ developed a new type of mosque, the core of which was a dome-covered square prayer hall - The combination of dome and square had an appealing geometric clarity and became the nucleus of all Ottoman architecture Mosaic tilework: An Islamic decorative technique in which large ceramic panels are fired, cut into smaller pieces, and set in plaster Cuerda Seca: A type of polychrome tilework used in decorating Islamic buildings Mosque of Selim II - The Ottomans developed a new type of mosque with a dome-covered square prayer hall - The dome of Sinan’s Mosque of Selim II is taller than Hagia Sophia’s and is an engineering triumph - The interior of Sinan’s Edirne mosque is a fusion of an octagon and a domecovered square with four half-domes at the corners - The plan features geometric clarity and precise numerical ratios

-

Muqarnas Tilework of the Entrance Portal of the Imam - The ceramists who produced the Cuerda Seca tiles of the muqarnas-filled portal to the Imam mosque had to manufacture a wide variety of shapes with curved surfaces to cover the prismatic, pointed half dome - Muhaqqaq: A cursive style of Islamic calligraphy - Mihrab - from the Madrasa Imami, Isfahan - Glazed Mosaic Tilework - This Iranian mihrab is a masterpiece of mosaic tilework - Every piece had to be cut to fit its specific place in the design - It exemplifies the perfect aesthetic union of Islamic calligraphy and ornamentation Luxury Arts - Carpet from the Funerary Mosque of Shaykh Safial-Din - MAQSUD OF KASHAN - Wool and silk - Maqsud of Kashan’s enormous Ardabil carpet required roughly 25 million knots - It presents the illusion of a heavenly dome with mosque lamps reflected in a pool of water filled with floating lotus blossoms - The design consists of a central sunburst medallion, representing the inside of a dome, surrounded by 16 pendants - Enamel: A decorative coating, usually colored, fused onto the surface of metal, glass, or ceramics - Mosque Lamp of Sayf Al-Din Tuquztimur - Glass with Enamel Decoration - The enamel decoration of this glass mosque lamp includes a quotation from the Koran comparing God’s light with the light in a lamp - The burning wick dramatically illuminated the sacred verse - Seduction of Yusuf - BIHZAD - Folio 52 Verso of the Bustan of Sultan Husayn Mayqara - The most famous Timurid manuscript painter was Bihzad - This page displays vivid color, intricate decorative detailing, and a brilliant balance between two-dimensional patterning and perspective - Court of Gayumars - SULTAN-MUHAMMAD - Folio 20 Verso of the Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp - Ink, Watercolor, and Gold on Paper - Sultan-Muhammad painted the legend of King Gayumars for the Safavid ruler Shah Tahmasp - The off-center placement on the page enhances the sense of lightness that

permeates the painting -

-

Basin -

Or Baptistère de Saint Louis MUHAMMAD IBN AL-ZAYN Brass, Inlaid with Gold and Silver Muhammad ibn al-Zayn proudly signed (six times) this basin used for washing hands at official ceremonies - The central band, inlaid with gold and silver, depicts Mamluk hunters and Mongol enemies Canteen with Episodes from the Life of Jesus - Brass, Inlaid with Silver - This unique canteen is the work of an Ayyubid metalsmith in the employ of a Christian pilgrim to the Holy Land - The three scenes from the life of Jesus appear in a counterclockwise sequence...