Horsemen and scholars, with Persian calligraphy (recto), and hunter and drinker, with decoupe Persian calligraphy (verso), folio from an Ottoman album

Fakhri of Bursa

Horsemen and scholars, with Persian calligraphy (recto), and hunter and drinker, with decoupe 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. Album-page, ink, colours and gold on paper, mounted on gold-flecked card, four paintings and five calligraphy samples in Persian, one of twelve detached folios from an Ottoman album, assembled Istanbul, Turkey, c. 1620. Recto: two horsemen hunting in a landscape, two scholars seated with books, two diagonal panels of Persian poetry in nasta`liq script, all mounted on marbled (ebru) paper, set on larger gold-flecked album-page. Verso: a horseman with a falcon, a drinker and a musician seated by a stream in a landscape, panel of Persian calligraphy in decoupe technique signed Fakhri, two further panels of Persian poetry in nasta`liq script, all mounted onto marbled (ebru) paper.