ARABESCO — A. in an Irish miniature. Lindisfarne Gospels (early 8th century) — London, British Museum, Cotton Ms. Nero I.
Bordered by various mining centers, the long arid valley of the A. was in the 23rd–5th centuries B.C. the “copper route” (v. ASIONGEBER).
With the exception of Bèth-'Arábāh, a border city between Benjamin and Judah (Ios. 15, 6, 61; 18, 22), the Vulgate invariably translates 'A. as a common noun (“solitudo,” “campestria,” “planities,” “desertum”).
The parts of the A. mentioned in the Old Testament are: Dead Sea (v.) jām ha-'arābhāh, “sea of the A.” (Deut. 3, 17; 4, 49; Ios. 3, 16; 12, 3; II Reg. 14, 25; Vulgate: “mare solitudinis”), 'arbhāth Jērīhā (Vulgate: “campestria urbis Iericho”; Ios. 4, 13; 5, 10), and 'arbhāth Mō'āh (Vulg.: “campestria Moab”; Num. 22, 1; 26, 3, 63; 31, 12; 33, 48 agg.).
BIBL.: A. Legendre, s. V. in DB, I, coll. 820–28; A. Musil, Arabia Petraea, II, Vienna 1907; W. J. Phythian-Adams, Israel in the 'Arabah, in Palestine Exploration Fund, 65 (1933), pp. 137–146 (he maintains that, in the time of David and Solomon, Israel possessed the whole of the A. as far as the Gulf of Elat); F.-M. Abel, Géographie de la Palestine, I, Paris 1933, pp. 81–85; II, there 1938, p. 41 ff.; F. Frank, Aus der 'Araba: Reiseberichte, in Zeitschr. des deutschen Palästina-Vereins, 57 (1934), pp. 191–280; A. Alt, Aus der 'Araba, II, ibid., 58 (1935), pp. 1–78. Antonino Romeo
ARABESCO. – This name is given to ornamental motifs based on the purely expressive value of the line, because Arab and Muslim art in general, by virtue of its anti-representational character, gave the greatest development to the linear element, fantastically and capriciously tangled and twisted. A 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 centuries, in Chinese and Japanese painting, and generally in all artistic expressions 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.
The term, moreover, was first used by fra’ Francesco Colonna in his Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (published in 1499), and was subsequently adopted throughout the Renaissance to indicate a method of painting in dry media used by the Arabs.
BIBL.: P. Pino, Dialogo di pittura edited by R. and A. Pallucchini, Venezia 1946 (from the 1548 edition), pp. 118 and 144.
Guglielmo Matthiae
