Page 207 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

other Islamic cultures, nor can any particular The fragment is one of a group of images from been far less familiar with the narrative than with
astrological or medical value be attributed to the album H.2153, all of different formats, repre- the gifts of porcelains brought back overland from
metal. A possible explanation is that since vessels senting a wedding procession. The porcelains are China by Muslim embassies to the Ming
of gold and silver were as forbidden in Islam as evidently part of the bride's dowry and probably emperors on their return journey from Beijing.
wine, pietistic concern to avoid sin on too many meant to represent heirlooms rather than pieces The exaggerated contrapposto stances of some
fronts favored crafting such luxurious specimens of contemporary manufacture. of the figures, though paralleled in popular
from a base metal, so that it could at least be The taste of the Middle East had long remained Chinese woodcuts of the sixteenth and seven-
argued that the vessels were "not really" gold. fixated on blue and white Chinese porcelains of teenth centuries, are also highly characteristic of
J.M.R. the Yuan and early Ming periods, to the extent figure-painting at the Aqqoyunlu court at Tabriz
that by the late fifteenth century the Jindezhen under Uzun Hasan (d. 1478) and Ya'qub Beg (d.
kilns found it profitable to manufacture copies of 1490), particularly in the style of the painter
100 these for export to the Islamic world. The most Shaykhi al-Ya-qubi. The present scroll fragment

PROCESSION SHOWING striking feature of the porcelains shown here is bears no attribution, but a reversed repeat of a
THE TRANSPORT OF CHINESE not their quantity but the predominance of large to servant holding a bowl in another album in the an
Topkapi Saray
covered jars, of a size and type that are difficult
Library (H.2i6o, fol.
bears
89%)
BLUE AND WHITE PORCELAIN parallel among extant pieces. These scroll frag- attribution to Mehmed Siyah Qalem.
c. 1470-1480 ments appear to illustrate a narrative recording J.M.R.
Iranian, Aqqoyunlu Turcoman the marriage procession of a Chinese princess sent
scroll fragment, gouache on silk off to marry a barbarian ruler on the north-west-
7
25 x 48 (9 /sx 18%) ern frontiers of China, an occurrence frequent
references: Yorukan 1965, 188-199; enough in Chinese history to make it pointless to
Medley 1985, 157-159 try to identify the present scene specifically. The
Topkapi Sarayi Muzesi, Istanbul miniatures were probably executed for the Aqqoy-
unlu court at Tabriz, and the artist would have

206 CIRCA 1492