CategoriesCultural and Religious Styles
Ottoman Art
Art of the Ottoman Empire, c. 1300–1922: Sinan's mosques, İznik tiles, court textiles, calligraphy and manuscript painting.
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No open-access works for Ottoman Art are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
The Ottoman state grew from a small principality in north-western Anatolia around 1300 into an empire spanning south-eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and it lasted until 1922. Early capitals at Bursa and Edirne have mosques faced with glazed tiles, and after Mehmed II took Constantinople in 1453, Istanbul became the centre of a coordinated court style.
Under Süleyman (reigned 1520–66), designers in the palace studio set a repertoire of tulips, carnations, hyacinths and serrated saz leaves that appeared on everything from book bindings to silk kaftans. Potters at İznik painted these flowers on white fritware, adding a raised tomato red by the 1550s. The architect Sinan perfected the domed mosque in the Süleymaniye in Istanbul (1550–57) and the Selimiye at Edirne (1568–75), which he regarded as his finest work. In the early 18th century Levni painted festivals and fashionable figures, and later Osman Hamdi Bey brought academic oil painting to Istanbul.