Study of a Dragon (recto), and Persian calligraphy (verso), folio from an Ottoman album

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Study of a Dragon (recto), and Persian calligraphy (verso), folio from an Ottoman album. Across Iran, India and Turkey, from the sixteenth century at least, albums (or muraqqa`) had become an important way of storing and presenting one's diverse collection of artworks on paper: valuable specimens of calligraphy, single-page paintings or drawings, and even European prints or Chinese paintings, all re-mounted in a careful sequence. This album was compiled in early seventeenth-century Ottoman Istanbul, probably for a private citizen. Folio, ink, colours and gold on paper, mounted on card, tinted drawing of a sinuous dragon framed in Persian calligraphy (on recto), and Persian verses in nasta`liq script by the Ottoman calligrapher Mir Mustafa, or Miri (on verso), mounted on album-page with marbled (ebru) borders, Istanbul, Turkey, calligraphy and drawing 1550-1600, album compiled c. 1620.