Islamic influences on Western art refers to the stylistic and formal influence of Islamic art, defined as the artistic production of the territories ruled by Muslims from the 7th century onward, on European Christian art. Western European Christians interacted with Muslims in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East and formed a relationship based on shared ideas and artistic methods. Islamic art includes a wide variety of media including calligraphy, illustrated manuscripts, textiles, ceramics, metalwork, and glass, and because the Islamic world encompassed people of diverse religious backgrounds, artists and craftsmen were not always Muslim. Glass production, for example, remained a Jewish speciality throughout the period. Christian art in Islamic lands, such as that produced in Coptic Egypt or by Armenian communities in Iran, continued to develop under Islamic rulers.
Islamic decorative arts were highly valued imports to Europe throughout the Middle Ages. In the early period, textiles were especially important, due to the labor-intensive nature of their production. These textiles originating in the Islamic world were frequently used for church vestments, shrouds, hangings and clothing for the elite. Islamic pottery of everyday quality was still preferred to European wares.
In the early centuries of Islam, the most important points of contact between the Latin West and the Islamic world from an artistic point of view were Southern Italy, Sicily, and the Iberian peninsula, which both held significant Muslim populations. Later the Italian maritime republics were important in trading artworks. In the Crusades, Islamic art seems to have had relatively little influence even on the Crusader art of the Crusader kingdoms, though it may have stimulated the desire for Islamic imports among Crusaders returning to Europe. Islamic architecture, however, appeared to influence the designs of Templar churches within the Middle East and other cathedrals within Europe upon the return of Crusaders in the 12th and 13th century.
Numerous techniques from Islamic art formed the basis of art in the Norman-Arab-Byzantine culture of Norman Sicily, much of which used Muslim artists and craftsmen working in the style of their own tradition. Techniques included inlays in mosaics or metals, often used for architectural decoration, porphyry or ivory carving to create sculptures or containers, and bronze foundries. In Iberia the Mozarabic art and architecture of the Christian population living under Muslim rule remained very Christian in most ways, but showed Islamic influences in other respects; much what was described as this is now called Repoblación art and architecture. During the late centuries of the Reconquista Christian craftsmen started using Islamic artistic elements in their buildings, as a result the Mudéjar style was developed.
Middle Ages
Islamic art was widely imported and admired by European elites during the Middle Ages.Hoffman, 324; Mack, Chapter 1, and passim throughout; The Art of the Umayyad Period in Spain (711–1031), Metropolitan Museum of Art timeline Retrieved April 1, 2011 There was an early formative stage from 600-900 and the development of regional styles from 900 onwards. Early Islamic art used mosaic artists and sculptors trained in the Byzantine and Coptic traditions.. Instead of wall-paintings, Islamic art used painted tiles, from as early as 862-3 (at the Great Mosque of Kairouan in modern Tunisia), which also spread to Europe.. According to John Ruskin, the Doge's Palace in Venice contains "three elements in exactly equal proportions — the Roman, the Lombard, and Arab. It is the central building of the world. ... the history of Gothic architecture is the history of the refinement and spiritualization of Northern work under its influence".The Stones of Venice, chapter 1, paras 25 and 29; discussed pp. 49–56 here
Throughout the Middle Ages, Islamic rulers controlled at various points parts of Southern Italy, the island of Sicily, and most of modern Spain and Portugal, as well as the Balkans, all of which retained large Christian populations. The Christian Crusaders also held territory in regions of the Islamic world, and ruled over some Muslim populations. Crusader art is mainly a hybrid of Catholic and Byzantine styles, showing little Islamic influence; however, the Mozarabic art of Christians in Al Andalus seems to show considerable influence from Islamic art. Islamic influence can also be traced in Romanesque and Gothic art in northern European art. For example, in the Romanesque portal at Moissac in southern France, the scalloped edges to the doorway and the circular decorations on the lintel above, have parallels in Iberian Islamic art. The depiction of Christ in Majesty surrounded by musicians, which was to become a common feature of Western heavenly scenes, may derive from courtly images of Islamic rulers.. Calligraphy, ornament, and the decorative arts generally were more important than in the West.Jones, Dalu & Michell, George, (eds); The Arts of Islam, Arts Council of Great Britain, 9, 1976,
The Hispano-Moresque pottery wares of Spain were first produced in Al-Andalus, but Muslim potters then seem to have emigrated to the area of Christian Valencia. Here they produced work that was exported to Christian elites across Europe;Caiger-Smith, chapters 6 & 7 other types of Islamic luxury goods, notably silk textiles and carpets, came from the generally wealthierHugh Thomas, An Unfinished History of the World, 224-226, 2nd edn. 1981, Pan Books, ; Braudel, Fernand, Civilization & Capitalism, 15-18th Centuries, Vol 1: The Structures of Everyday Life, William Collins & Sons, London 1981, p. 440: "If medieval Islam towered over the Old Continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific for centuries on end, it was because no state (Byzantium apart) could compete with its gold and silver money ..."; and Vol 3: The Perspective of the World, 1984, , p. 106: "For them [the Italian maritime republics], success meant making contact with the rich regions of the Mediterranean - and obtaining gold currencies, the dinars of Egypt or Syria, ... In other words, Italy was still only a poor peripheral region ..." [period before the Crusades]. The Statistics on World Population, GDP and Per Capita GDP, 1-2008 AD compiled by Angus Maddison show Iran and Iraq as having the world's highest per capita GDP in the year 1000 eastern Islamic world itself (the Islamic conduits to Europe west of the Nile were, however, not wealthier),Rather than along religious lines, the divide was between east and west, with the rich countries all lying east of the Nile: Maddison, Angus (2007): "Contours of the World Economy, 1–2030 AD. Essays in Macro-Economic History", Oxford University Press, , p. 382, table A.7. and Maddison, Angus (2007): "Contours of the World Economy, 1–2030 AD. Essays in Macro-Economic History", Oxford University Press, , p. 185, table 4.2 give 425 1990 International Dollars for Christian Western Europe, 430 for Islamic North Africa, 450 for Islamic Spain and 425 for Islamic Portugal, while only Islamic Egypt and the Christian Byzantine Empire had significantly higher GDP per capita than Western Europe (550 and 680–770 respectively) (Milanovic, Branko (2006): "An Estimate of Average Income and Inequality in Byzantium around Year 1000", Review of Income and Wealth, Vol. 52, No. 3, pp. 449–470 (468)) with many passing through Venice.The subject of Mack's book; the Introduction gives an overview However, for the most part luxury products of the court culture such as silks, ivory, precious stones and jewels were imported to Europe only in an unfinished form and manufactured into the end product labelled as "eastern" by local medieval artisans.Hoffman, Eva R. (2007): Pathways of Portability: Islamic and Christian Interchange from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century, pp.324f., in: Hoffman, Eva R. (ed.): Late Antique and Medieval Art of the Mediterranean World, Blackwell Publishing, They were free from depictions of religious scenes and normally decorated with ornament, which made them easy to accept in the West,Mack, 4 indeed by the late Middle Ages there was a fashion for pseudo-Kufic imitations of Arabic script used decoratively in Western art.
Decorative arts
The historiography of medieval art privileges the study of painting, sculpture, and architecture, in spite of the decorative arts' ubiquity in material culture and popular media. Contributing to this marginalization is the gendering of such objects, which are often labeled feminine.
Until the end of the Middle Ages, many European produced goods could not match the quality of objects originating from areas in the Islamic world or the Byzantine Empire. Because of this, a wide variety of portable objects from various decorative arts were imported from the Islamic world into Europe during the Middle Ages, mostly through Italy, and above all Venice.The subject of Mack's book; see Chapter 1 especially. Venetians visited cities like Damascus, Cairo, and Aleppo throughout the Middle Ages. When they would visit these Muslim centers, they would bring back new ideas for art and architecture. The city of Venice was built with a Christian population in mind, but implemented many classic Islamic elements, and the merchant-city reputation of Venice helped solidify the blend of Islamic and Christian cultures at the time. In many areas European-made goods could not match the quality of Islamic or Byzantine work until near the end of the Middle Ages. Luxury textiles were widely used for clothing and hangings and also, fortunately for art history, also often as shrouds for the burials of important figures, which is how most surviving examples were preserved. In this area Byzantine silk was influenced by Sassanian textiles, and Islamic silk by both, so that is hard to say which culture's textiles had the greatest influence on the Cloth of St Gereon, a large tapestry which is the earliest and most important European imitation of Eastern work. European, especially Italian, cloth gradually caught up with the quality of Eastern imports, and adopted many elements of their designs.
Byzantine pottery was not produced in high-quality types, as the Byzantine elite used silver instead. Islam has many hadithic injunctions against eating off precious metal, and so developed many varieties of fine pottery for the elite, often influenced by the Chinese porcelain wares which had the highest status among the Islamic elites themselves — the Islamic only produced porcelain in the modern period. Much Islamic pottery was imported into Europe, dishes (bacini) even in Islamic Al-Andalus in the 13th century, in Granada and Málaga, where much of the production was already exported to Christian countries. Many of the potters migrated to the area of Valencia, long reconquered by the Christians, and production here outstripped that of Al-Andalus. Styles of decoration gradually became more influenced by Europe, and by the 15th century the Italians were also producing lustrewares, sometimes using Islamic shapes like the albarello.Caiger-Smith, Chapters 6 and 7 Metalwork forms like the zoomorphic jugs called aquamanile and the bronze mortar were also introduced from the Islamic world.
Mudéjar art in Spain
Mudéjar art is a style influenced by Islamic art that developed from the 12th century until the 16th century in the Iberia's Christian kingdoms. It is the consequence of the between the Muslim, Christian and Jewish populations in medieval Spain. The elaborate decoration typical of Mudéjar style fed into the development of the later Plateresque style in Spanish architecture, combining with late Gothic and Early Renaissance elements.
Pseudo-Kufic