Alex Dika Seggerman:
Florentine Arabic: Writing an Islamic Art History at the KHI Photothek

Between 1300-1500, pseudo-Arabic scripts often appeared on the hems of garments depicted in Florentine painting and sculpture. Generally golden in color, they adorn religious figures in artworks by many leading artists, including Duccio, Giotto, Fra Angelico, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Verrocchio. Scholars have hypothesized that these scripts were likely the result of Mediterranean trade, especially textiles, as well as Arabic’s evocation of the Holy Lands and Jerusalem, which were under the Mamluk Sultanate during this period. 

Using the KHI Photothek’s collection, I trace Arabic pseudo-scripts in artworks and their sources in textiles, metalwork, and ivories. Yet, while the medium of photography facilitates this research, it also changes the artworks and their meanings. The photographs can heighten or obscure the presence of the scripts. In photographs of bronze sculpture, the script is more visible than in person, whereas monochrome photography minimizes or conceals the gold scripts in polychrome paintings. 

This project exhibits how new, global art histories can be written using the KHI Photothek, despite, or maybe because of, the collection’s strength in Italian art. The camera captures evidence that emerges as significant only many years after the shutter snapped. These Florentine Arabic scripts, likely unseen by the original photographers, record the impact of Islamic art on the early Renaissance. Moreover, I argue, the photographs become works of art in their own right, and thus should be included under the broad umbrella of Islamic art.