ARABESQUE. - This name is given to ornamental motifs that are based on the pure expressive value of line, and this because Arab and generally Muslim art, on account of its anti-representational character, gave the greatest development to the linear element, fantastically and capriciously tangled and twisted. The taste for the arabesque is anti-classical in nature, but it is not exclusive to Islamic civilization; it is common in Coptic art, in Irish miniatures of the 7th-8th century, in Chinese and Japanese painting, and generally in all expressions of art not founded on a naturalistic conception. It is nevertheless an expressive means in no way inferior to others, and indeed equal to any other for the purposes of art.

ARABESQUE - A. in an Irish miniature. Lindisfarne Gospels (early 8th century) - London, British Museum, Cotton Ms. Nero I.(from Toesca, Storia dell'arte italiana: Il Medioevo)

The term, moreover, was used for the first time by Fra' Francesco Colonna in his Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (published in 1499), and then adopted throughout the Renaissance, to indicate a method of dry painting used by the Arabs.

Bibliography

BIBL.: P. Pino, Dialogo di pittura a cura di R. e A. Pallucchini, Venezia 1946 (from the ed. of 1548), pp. 118 and 144. Guglielmo Matthiae

@incollection{ec1_arabesco, author = {Matthiae, Guglielmo}, title = {Arabesco}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {I}, pages = {1735}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1948}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/arabesco} }

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Arabesque

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