Cinco performance tonight the performance requires that there be 20 people so they are looking for more people who would like to come it's at 10 30 tonight right near here and if you would like to come then you need to speak to Lubna who will be standing in the ceramic next to the ceramic store after uh at the end of the conference today just to see if there are 20 of you to um make this performance go forward it's an optional it's just something some of the people here would like to do let me also um welcome you back to the evenings to the last of our four sessions today we have one speaker and then all of the speakers who've spoken today and Jonathan Bloom will all come up and we'll have a panel discussion or a group discussion if anyone has questions that will be should be addressed to the group and let me now introduce to you this afternoon's introducer Jason who will be introducing today's this afternoon speaker thank you the Primacy Islam accorded to the written word is the reason for the extraordinary significance of the Arts of the book in Islamic Art our next speaker Dr Mariana shrieve Simpson is a recognized expert in this area in which she has extensively published taught and lectured Dr Simpson obtained her doctorate from Harvard University in 1978 and has been an influential figure at many distinguished institutions it is with great pleasure that I present to you Dr Simpson who will share with us today her ongoing research on the color red in the history of Islamic art please let's welcome Dr Simpson thank you thank you so much and good afternoon me buenos Tardes my presentation this afternoon is an initial and tentative attempt to understand the origins application and significance of the color red in the history and material culture of the Islamic World particularly as my subtitle indicates within Arabic Persian and Turkish artistic traditions and I'll be dealing with those traditions in a broad historical context but stopping short of the modern era and I should also say that much of what I've prepared for presentation has already been anticipated by some of the previous speakers so there'll be a little bit of of haven't I heard this before Deja Anton do maybe we call it I am sure that um many of you will have recognized that the first part of my title is adopted from that of the Intriguing novel by the Turkish author and Nobel Laureate or Han pamuk originally published as Benin Adam McKinley and translated into Spanish as May Yoho Rojo my name is red is set in late 16th century Istanbul and involves a group of Royal ottoman painters who are illustrating a special manuscript for the sultan Murad III in Frankish that means European style the novel begins with the murder of one of the many a tourists who objects to the Project's unprecedented stylistic approach and proceeds via a long and convoluted plot to the identification of the murderer who was one of the other painters Through The Verve with which he just picks a particular horse for anyone interested in Islamic Art and particularly anyone who studies Persian and Turkish Illustrated manuscripts part of the appeal of my name is read comes from its recurring allusions to and descriptions often with many Liberties taken of compositions in such well-known volumes as the great Mongol saname on the left on the right sorry the tafmas Shana May on the right the Sur named of Murad III and The Binding on the right is from another manuscript made for Murad III and the haftarang made for sultan Ibrahim Mirza otherwise known as the freerjami which we've already seen a little bit of in the earlier paper Palm Oak Drew on this particular manuscript the freerjami for much of the imagery in his novel my name is red and in fact the horse on the left is the one that the murderer in his novel painted or at least it's the horse that pamuk was looking at and thinking about when he described the horse that the murderer painted so in addition to being a murder mystery uh the novel is an Islamic Art historical treasure hunt meanwhile much of the book's narrative complexity is due to the multiplicity of its characters some of which have proper names or specific identities others the name of animate or inanimate objects and still others the name of colors all of which do double duty as the succinct titles of the of the books 59 chapters and as their first person narrators curiously given the title of the novel itself only one of its chapters features a character named red and this is uh this chapter which is number 31 so sort of Midway through the story is also unique and starting off with several long paragraphs in which red as narrator describes his or maybe hers appearance in both specific and generic paintings and other artistic Productions and here are a few excerpts from this Soliloquy with the appropriate uh this very specific illustrations that that red is describing show I'm showing you here I was there says red on rustam's quiver when he traveled far and wide in search of his missing Steed on the left I was on the outfit of the Striking Maiden that bahram Gore visited on a Tuesday on the right I emerged as Alexander's lifeblood shimmered brightly from his handsome nose after he suffered sunstroke palmoke was apparently looking at this illustration in the freerjami he didn't seem to notice however that in fact there's no blood coming from a scandar's nose I embellished Usha carpets and blouses worn by stunning maidens with outstretched necks watching through the street through open shutters like this image of zuleja in the fair dummy I love says red Illuminating the wings of angels as here on the upper in the upper left the lips of Maidens the death wounds of corpses and severed heads bespeckled with blood this lengthy itemization is Then followed by a question that gets right to the heart of the matter and indeed to the point of this symposium what says the character read does it mean to be a color he then proceeds to answer that rhetorical question in one stunning sentence color is the touch of the eye music to the deaf a word out of Darkness then red quickly turned self-referential and self-congratulatory I am so fortunate to be read I am fiery I am strong I know men take notice of me and that I cannot be resisted we will return to Red's strength attraction and desirability in due course for the moment however I want to expand briefly on what pamuk has signaled about the colors universality and ubiquity first as a broad cultural construct and then as a particular visual phenomenon in Islamic art in English or in this group I should say in American English American English we roll out the red carpet and paint the town red on celebratory occasions we get caught red-handed when snitching from the cookie jar and we get tangled in red tape made from safflower as we know when dealing with government bureaucracies we turn beet red when we are embarrassed just as here in Spain say Pony from shame or embarrassment while in Turkey people turn red because automak when they blush an expression that is also associated with roasting and become raving red Kissel Dilla when they are mad Americans also see red when enraged a similar Arabic expression for being angry has it let literally his eye got red in Syria the same expression signifies a cruel person and an Iran executioners cruelty and perversion is similarly reflected in early mon in the early modern Spanish refrain kabet Alma pervasa a bermejo or red-headed person in 16th and 17th century Spain certainly was not trustworthy as we can infer from a long anecdote involving a king of Granada named bermejo included in the 1610 tresoro de la lengua castellana many such red expressions or associations worldwide relate to or come from blood which as far as I know is always read unless you happen to be aristocratic and then maybe your blood is blue and which in turn naturally conjures up violence War Bloodshed martyrdom patriotism Jonathan Bloom showed us last night many Flags uh in which include red and of course death on the other hand to call someone sofru or reddish face in Iran means that a person is proud prosperous and happy traditional Turkish brides wear red not white and later we'll we will see the same Association in classical Persian painting and again of course there's a different definite blood Association here something that is highly embellished or gaudy in Turkish is said to be literally with red and Roses or with red and sequins and someone who is trying to be visible to be to appear at the center of things in other words to show off or be a show-off is described as wearing red well we could go on and on here but it's I think the point is obvious red abounds in many different figures of speech and social customs and with both positive and negative associations worldwide now we could do a similar overview of the many types the many and varied types of traditional Islamic Art involving red in the interest of time I'm just going to show a very small selection starting with oh darn I meant to show this to you before when I was talking about expressions in red you'll some of you will recognize it from um John Cage's book on culture color and culture in which this red disc is a is the same exercise and after imagery that John Thompson showed us earlier so just a selection of objects starting with the earliest surviving manuscripts of the Quran which typically typically have red orthographic signs that is red ink is used to Mark the vowels as we see on these leaves of in kufic script from the 8th to 9th centuries red is also regularly used within marginal medallions that count Quran verses and that as here and that indicate the places for prostration often beautifully combined with gold and red serves in many Islamic Islamic manuscripts of many different types and many different periods as the common color for rubrics or or text headings that's a practice that goes back to Antiquity for keywords and phrases for the ruled lines um that uh separate that in frame the written surface and for diagrams and scientific manuscripts as in this copy of Euclid's book of elements dated 1188. early Islamic Ceramics and glass invariably feature red indeed red creates the dominant coloristic effect on the rare polychrome lusterware and enamel glass such as these produced in Arab lands during the 8th and 9th centuries the glass on the lower right you're probably familiar with from it's in the Metropolitan Museum the shirt on the upper left belongs to the Freer Gallery in Washington it's I don't believe it's ever been published but it's a beautiful example of the use of red in early early lusterware and the final the the original Bowl must have been spectacular red is also a regular part of the palette on under glazed slip painted Wares made in North Eastern Iran and Central Asia during the 9th and 10th centuries and with these um these slip painted pieces it is noteworthy that the white black and red color scheme replicates that of early manuscripts and later we'll see why optically and linguistically speaking this combination may not have been simply for visual effect red continues to Star on medieval and early modern Ceramics and glass such as this well-known mom look Beaker in the in Baltimore and this eye-catching ottoman jug in Copenhagen it appears too I'm doing this rapidly on early and medieval metal vessels in the form of copper inlays as uh on this jug again in Baltimore and on the famous bobbrinsky bucket and the Hermitage of 1163 in which copper inlay contrasts with the metal itself and throughout the centuries red has been a dominant and often the predominant color on Islamic textiles and carpets as we see on these examples the famous silk dateable before 963 on your left this hanging also silk from 13th century Spain on the right a Persian velvet on the right from the time of Shah Abbas a tent hanging from Mogul India on the left and finally the Sumptuous kaftan said to have been worn by the ottoman Sultan Salem the first red also flashes and glows from innumerable pieces of Islamic jewelry and other precious objects studied with rubies and of course it shows up and off in architecture as at the uh the Alhambra the name's probably a corruption from the Arabic Alhambra or red castle and at the Royal complexes in Delhi and Agra the upper right is Delhi Jonathan Bloom showed us Agra last night and of course on the interior of buildings as just next door across the across the way so this all these buildings because of the distinctive color of their stone masonry finally and returning to the Arts of the Islamic Arts of the book red was also a favorite color on the for the decoration of manuscripts including their illumination illustration and binding as we see on these 15th century examples on the top the illuminated frontist piece on the opening pages of a manuscript made in Cairo around 1470 for the mom look ruler kite Bay and below the pictorial frontis piece and the inner cover or dubler of two equally Splendid volumes made in herat for the tumoric prince bison Gore around 1420 9 and 1430 respectively and I hope that these images look sharper to you in the audience than they do to me up here they tend they look fuzzy are they they're all right good great thank you so in short there is hardly an Islamic artistic medium in which the color red does not appear no surprise later we will look at the artistic or more exactly the aesthetic functions that red plays in these and other works of art with particular attention to those media where the colorant is applied as a die excuse me a pigment a Dye or a lake and I don't think we have to go into any further explanation of those distinctions after the previous presentations but before we get to that I just want to mention whether under one other fundamental aspect of red that the works of art that we've just seen and here I wanted to show you something else yes a example of red pigment an example of red dye I want to mention just one other fundamental aspect of red that the works of art we've just seen bring to mind and we and that we all know intuitively but may not spend a lot of time worrying about in the course of our everyday activities namely like that this color varies according to Hue value in chroma we know that from we've heard that several times already in the last day and a half and has many different shades or tones each with its own distinctive distinctive name and these are samples of red made from Carmine which I'll talk about in a moment in English for instance we distinguish between Crimson Scarlet Vermilion Ruby Rose fuchsia and burgundy not to mention pink cranberry tomato red fire engine red coral terracotta and so on in Spanish there is Rojo carmisi escalata Colorado which I think is archaic Ruby Tinto which is what is usually used to describe red wine although it's Negra and Catalan and so forth a similarly Rich lexicon of Reds exist in Arabic in addition to Amer the most usual word there are some 50 other Arabic words for red and plus others that denote the colors various mixtures and blends certain Arabic words have been identified as the etymological origins of their Spanish and English equivalents notably notably kimes for karmacy and crimson and sikhlat for escalata and Scarlet my point here is as much a perceptual as a linguistic one while we all may acknowledge the existence of diverse Reds and may even refer to them in conversation we might be hard-pressed to find their exact correspondence in the material world and or to make the correspondences in a consistent fashion for instance I'm comfortable in describing the robe of this Mogul Indian painter is red and the delicate blossoms in the hand of the safavid Persian Maiden as pink but I have no idea whether contemporary viewers would have called the painter's robe sork which is the common Persian word for this color and used in Mughal India and the young lady's flowers golgun meaning Rose or all meaning light red or arusa meaning baby doll red furthermore since again and what I'm about to say is something we've heard already since the color of an object is determined by the light that it both reflects and emits and by the way the receptors in our eyes received and respond to that light's dominant wavelength luminosity and Purity my jacket's particular shade of red would doubtless look different to us and that's and that's perhaps require a different descriptor outside in the bright quarterman sunlight Sunshine than here in the artificial light of this lecture hall and by the way again this is something we know we've heard of all the colors in the Spectrum red has the longest discernible light wavelength which is why it elicits the strongest Optical reaction of all colors and is one reason why the Matador carries a Scarlet moleta in the bullfight's final stage it's the combination of the colors long wavelengths and the cloth movement that attracts the animal's attention while Reds varied vocabulary what the linguist John Lyons has called its lexicalization or lexical encoding invariably leads us into the rarified realm of color perception theories it also brings us to another much more concrete aspect of this ubiquitous color namely the actual physical origins of red pigments and red dyes throughout the history of Islamic art on this topic there's a great deal of information available thanks to Arabic and Persian treatises written as long ago as the 8th 9th and 10th centuries as well as technical studies of much more recent vintage and we could spend days reviewing the medieval Islamic literature alone suffice it to say that the red colorant comes from a variety of synthetic and natural sources including animal vegetable and mineral and it is the specific ingredients and the preparation of those ingredients that determine the difference between for instance this orange red robe as painted in 16th century Iran and this Crimson one is woven in 16th or 17th century turkey and we'll take these two works of art as initial points of departure for a brief foray into the material Origins and production of red this attractive youth usually called a prince was created around 1550 by the Persian painter Muhammad haravi whose name appears at the lower edge of the composition the artists used many different pigments to paint the picture including the red lead for the prince's under robe his painting belongs today in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington and has been tested there by the Museum's conservation and scientific staff which is one reason one good reason for using it as an example today so red light lead also called red lead oxide has the same chemical and crystalline structure as the as the mineral minium which was however used only as a pigment in Greco-Roman times if at all someone doubtless will correct me on that if I'm wrong and by the way the Latin name minium is the origin of the word miniature originally meaning to paint in red by the time Muhammad haravi sat down to paint his Prince red lead had long been available as an artificial pigment made by heating or roasting lead white at extremely high temperatures a process that results in particles that are red to orange and transmitted light the batch of red lead base pigment the Mohammed haravi used for the prince's robe as well as for the robe of the woman on his knee there was obviously more on the orange end of the Spectrum which is considered the purest red pigment chemically speaking because it has the fewest impurities already in 9th century Baghdad the eminent physician and Alchemist al-hazi recognized minium or red lead as an artificially prepared substance in the early 11th century movies a princely patron of the Arts who in modern-day Tunisia who wrote a very important Treatise on the Arts and Crafts of bookmaking includes red lead as an ingredient in inks for calligraphy and dyes on for leather bindings an ingredient for for ink in calligraphy and dies for leather bindings such as these so the red vocalization dots are very probably red lead and as is this binding although I grant you it looks more Brown than red by the early safavid period when Muhammad haravi was at work and went for a Time the Great Master bezod to whom is ascribed this painting with a young man in a beautiful red robe was head of the royal library and Studio various recipes for red lead were available of which one compiled by a fellow artist named sadiqibe begins with a warning that quote what is involved is not holy without its dangers and that's because red lead poisoning was then as it is still nowadays A notorious Hazard and then he goes on with detailed instructions which I'm going to condense for heating dissolving and cooling the lead then washing it several times mixing it with salimoniac pounding it repeatedly repeatedly and energetically than roasting and washing it yet again until sadiki Bay tells us red lead should have formed strong and pure this last comment giving the red pigment Properties or attributes is typical of the metaphorical language so often found in treatises on color making and relates directly to the use of colors including red as a metaphor an Arabic Persian and Turkish cultures a subject that we'll get to anong meanwhile we now have red lead a dense and finely textured pigment which that was used as an ink and as a paint by Islamic artists throughout the centuries including to color paper and this is a 14th century nasrid Spanish paper letter written on pinkish paper and this well-known illustration with the detail here of paper I can't use the word dime probably paper coloring down below dipping the sheets of paper into a vat of diluted pigment I hope that's what it was and hanging on the line to dry so the kind of testing done on Muhammad haravi's Prince at the Freer also reveals that red lead was often used and and often used together with and sometimes over Vermillion another red pigment and for instance on these paintings of this one from the great Mongol soname of 1325 or so the red bricks are red lead but Kings of's robe is vermilion and here on a 16th century buharan illustration the little carpet here is vermilion and this figure is red lead also called Cinnabar in English cinabrio in Spanish and zhanchdorf in Arabic Vermilion is a dense red mineral found in mines in Asia in the altai and Russian turkistan with the most famous deposits and Cheryl Porter has already mentioned this and you saw a sample of it outside I have one too being the Almaden mines of Spain in Theodore real about 125 kilometers from here the mineral but can be used as a pigment as we have heard earlier and the chronicle by the early by the well-known early 17th century Persian author and Court secretary hazi Ahmad describes how Cinnabar can be prepared for paint and I have no these have these uh illustrations from the freerjami haven't been tested for uh for Cinnabar or Vermilion but uh Kazi Ahmad was wrote a great deal about the patron of this manuscript so there may be a connection more typically however this pigment with two names that is vermilion and Cinnabar is based on artificially made mercuric sulfide created by combining Mercury and sulfur in a process that apparently first developed in China early in the Common Era and then like many other technological developments move Western Westward and into the Islamic World by at least the 8th or 9th century when the Arab Alchemist jabir mentioned a red compound formed by the union of sulfur and Mercury once again the sofifed painter and pigment specialist sadiki Bay provides a succinct explanation of vermilion's preparation in his day for this friend he says You must take three or four missed calls of mercury that's about four and a quarter grams plus three Miss Galls of sulfur pound the mixture in a mortar for something over an hour and don't be alarmed if it turns Darkly Ashen in color the next step is for you to place the mixture in a glazed flask and and to keep it on the fire from noon to Nightfall then let it cool and then see the brilliant red vermilion that has formed interestingly the word Vermilion comes from the Latin Burmese a name that originally designated an insect used for the preparation of red dye although it has long been recognized that the pigment Vermilion is produced as sadiki Bay instructs us from a synthetic compound of mercury and sulfur and not from an insect it is also the case that insects were used for the making of red pigment or more precisely oops again Cheryl Porter I'm sure will correct me a form of Red Lake and used by Islamic illuminators like an ink for small details within their intricate compositions as well or so it seems by Islamic painters and this illustration from the 1224 diascorities manuscript this figure here has been tested it belongs to the Freer and it's an organic pigment of some Unknown Origin unfortunately the scientific literature for this particular organic source of red pigment still seems rather limited on the other hand there's plenty of information available about the very various organic substances used to create red dye stuffs of various grades in the Islamic world among those that produce the highest quality red and that were the most sought after for luxury items such as the silk robes worn by ottoman Sultan's princes and courtiers and here's one worn by Salim the first that we saw earlier and a smaller robe worn by Ahmed the first as a child or Ahmed well before he became Ahmed so the the most um uh um highest quality were sources for uh red dye stuffs were certain species of aphids or scale insects of the genus caucus and we've heard about this or also I'm going to go quickly here we're talking about um small teeny weeny wingless female insects that lived on the roots stems and leaves of particular trees and grasses and that were collected after they had made it and before they had laid their eggs so these were pregnant caucets you we saw at the actual insect itself here's a little drawing of one and it's the multitude of their red legs and eggs and each female contained thousands that yielded the particular red colorant known in the scientific literature as Carmine after the bugs were killed dried and crushed so I'm going to spare you the details of this harvesting and especially the post-harvesting process it's a little Grim except to say that the Harvesters traditionally were women who grew their fingernails long so to be able to pick off the small insects various species of caucets indigenous to the nearest were used for red dye stuffs and I just will mention a couple one of the most sought after came from Armenia and Azerbaijan and its dye is called Armenian red it's been traced back to Assyrian times and attested to by numerous Arab and Persian geographers dating from the 9th and 14th centuries um medieval texts generally refer to the dye as curmis or kermez and the origin of the Spanish Khan Messi and the English Crimson as I mentioned earlier and Vary between identifying its source as an insect and as a red worm and the ancient Persian or polavy word for worm was kirim or karmir here was also the etymological origin of a second dye made from the bodies of yet another caca the short name for this one is kermes this particular species breeds on the scarlet oak trees around many parts of the Mediterranean including Spain across the top of the Fertile Crescent and into the Iranian Plateau it appears in many classical texts Arabic Hebrew sorry Greek Roman Arab Persian also the Hebrew and Christian scriptures and some of the earliest accounts describe karamas as a berry a grain a snail and a worm which just adds to the kind of lexical confusion about all this in this case the red was a very deep bright or Scarlet Red it enjoyed its greatest popularity as a die from the 12th century onwards and probably was the source for the brilliant red coloring of Roger the the mantle of Roger the second 1133-34 by the early modern times however the appeal of this particular caucet started to be rivaled by that of another called the cochineal a species that grows on the palms of the no pal prickly cactus in the Mexican Highlands and it was harvested and used there for red colorant long before Columbus discovered the Americas and here we have a Nopal no polory it's called a cactus farm and a Mexican gentleman holding up Cactus Leaf uh with um the coach Neil on it so this was exported by the Spanish uh colonizers and conquistadors from Los Indios as they called their new world dominions uh called it Grana cochinellia cochinilla excuse me granted because the dried insects looked like grain and cochinia being a Divine diminutive of caucus or coconus which is the Latin for scarlet this is exported widely by the early uh 16th century including to India Iran turkey and Italy particularly Venice and of course also to Spain there's a wonderful those of you interested in this there's a wonderful book published in 2005 by Amy Butler Greenfield called a perfect red it's about to come out well maybe next year in a Spanish Edition and one aspect of the whole story of Coach Neil which is fascinating and relevant for our purposes is that in 1614 the Spanish Monarch Philip III Senate diplomatic mission to the Persian Shah Abbas the First with his Ambassador bearing several hundred gifts all together totaling 32 000 ducats which was a lot of money by far the largest item the most valuable item in this assemblage of Royal presence was Five Barrels of cochineal described in the Habsburg inventories is worth 4 000 ducats and making the finest crimson color this particular historical incident does not appear in Greenfield's study a perfect red but it certainly reinforces her point about the importance of cochineal in early modern international relations and artistic production and even with all this Believe It or Not we've only begun to scratch the surface of Red's history and there are still other organic substances of which we've heard about a bit already a stick lack matter safflower and even pomegranate blossoms that were known either through scientific testing or historical texts to being used for the color red and Arabic Persian and Turkish works of art indeed the multiple Origins in both natural and synthetic synthetic materials the diverse manufacturing processes and widespread distribution of red as both the pigment and dye from literally one end of the traditional Islamic world to the other and all documented in one way or another from the earliest phases of Islamic history to early modern times speaks to the widespread availability and use to the profound investment in terms of Labor time and capital and to the obvious attraction too and demand for the color red throughout Islamic history red thus becomes a compelling case study in the social and economic dynamics of artistic production and patronage as well as for key developments in Islamic Science and Technology the color or more accurately the raw materials that create the color also helps us to appreciate the vast International network of commodity trade workshop and financial relations this is what Cheryl Porter also discussed that link for instance the Almaden minors who brought up the Cinnabar Aura from deep within al-an Duluth to the women who use their long fingernails to pick off the kermi's insects from oak trees and Azerbaijan to the merchants who imported these raw materials for processing into fustot Aleppo borsa tubris and Delhi to the calligraphers in Baghdad the binders and carowan the potters and nishapur the painters in harat and the silk Weavers in Agra who used the processed pigments and Dawes for their Creations such as these a manuscript illustration from 15th century herat and a beautiful hanging from late 16th early 17th century India and ultimately to the bazaars madrasas and palaces of Granada Cairo Damascus Istanbul Isfahan and Lahore where their finished product finished products of all kinds featuring red were sold bought and enjoyed to this intricate Network we must add all those such as the 11th century Arab Prince ibnbadas and the 16th century Persian painter sadiki Bay who experimented with and recorded recipes for red in short the color red constituted a veritable industry with a widespread presence and long-lasting place in Islamic material and cultural history so now we have read um pigment and red dye in the hands as it were of the artists and Artisans who used it we need to look at exactly that what use did they make of red or to put this another way what role does the color red play in artistic creation and what are the Aesthetics of its application we have seen how in early manuscripts of the Quran red is used to vocalize the holy text itself as well as to color marginal medallions and Sewer dividers thus here read simultaneously marks or defines as well as draws our attention to fundamental phonetic and textual elements of the word of God the color AIDS in other words and the progression and understanding of both content and calligraphy a service that provided in manuscripts of all kinds and qualities religious and secular luxurious and work a day throughout the history of the Islamic Arts of the book including as we've seen for the rubrics are heading keywords and glosses of various manuscripts red serves a similar function on slip painted Ceramics from 9th and 10th Century Central Asia and Northeastern Iran and to give an example here is a ceramic Bowl in the David collection discussed most recently by Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom in their cosmophilia exhibition catalog it's Arabic inscription reads he who believes in recompense from God is generous with gifts a Hadith attributed to the Prophet Muhammad four small dots sing signal the beginning of the tradition here and each of the and the initial letters of each of the words in the inscription are written in red to draw our attention to them and this is not this is a very good example but it's not the only example of this kind of artistic practice and here I want to pause for a moment and pick up a point I mentioned at the very outset about the conjunction of white black and red so common in early Quran manuscripts and on contemporary Iranian pottery you doubtless know that along with white and black red belongs to what is sometimes called the primary color Triad or Trilogy and is generally accepted as one of the three colors chromatically in the middle between light or white and dark and black that appears universally in almost every sector of humanity and in almost all human languages in the course of their evolution more particularly and this according to the groundbreaking studies of the ethylolinguistics of Berlin and K whom Jonathan Bloom referred to yesterday all languages contain terms or what are called perceptual color categories that signify white and black if the language contains three color terms the third one will be read always apparently no exceptions Red's linguistic prominence is borne out by its frequent reference in classical and medieval philosophical debates on the nature of phenomenon such as site including those of the Arab writers Al tabari and avaros as well as in modern day sensory and perceptual studies concerning the distinction between the quality of an object and the object itself that is not to say of course that the calligrapher of this Quran and the or the Potter of this bowl would have known or even cared about such discourse I would bet however that there was some strong sense born out of artistic experience that deeply saturated red was the most effective visual adjunct to the totally unsaturated unsaturated white and black and returning now to how red Works in artistic practice in addition to um highlighting selectively highlighting key epigraphic features of white and black slip painted Wares red also sets off the main geometric geometrical and floral elements of their decor and these pieces for instance red enhances the design by seeming to activate or Propel the scent the circular movement of the central motifs as well as to highlight the inscriptions on the rim indeed on the piece on the left red outlines and thus animates the primary feature of the day the decor which is this elegant palmette interlace once again we see how red is what I think of as the design Dynamo likewise Red's efficacy and setting off designs mean that it was in regular use as a background color basically as a foil for the principal or primary elements in a work of art the feature that constitutes the actual subject or content of a composition as we see on this 13th century Quran where the lines of writing are encased in red Contour panels about the same time quite a bright red began to emerge as a common background color in Illustrated manuscripts filling in as it were for what previously had been either uncolored ground or gold admittedly such a solid application of red paint often tomato red in tone as the ground for narrative action or narrative inaction as in the case of the frontis piece on the right seems to have been a rather short-lived artistic practice be that as it may the use of red as a pictorial background and a major books making Center like shiraz in South Central Iran where the Charlamagne manuscript of 1341 on the left and the khalilaudima of 1307 on the right were Illustrated um suggests that artists had recognized and understood the color's Effectiveness as the backdrop for narrative action and this is maybe as has been suggested in a continuation of a much older tradition of Central Asian and Iranian wall painting Islamic textiles also regularly regularly feature red backgrounds as in the silk fragment from the late 14th or early 15th century centuries Spain in Copenhagen where an Arabic poem is woven in White against a striking red ground which was doubtless kermes red also serves as the ground for figural imagery in both textiles and carpets as in the famous 10th Century sagittals fragment with its two impressive elephants and on the sofa vid rug where pairs of real and mythical figures wrestle on a floral field of red it is also frequently the color of choice for the central field on Islamic prayer rugs and prayer mats with their typical architectural elements representing the mifrob niche in a mosque um as in these two examples and with these works we enter that ambiguous sphere so often encountered in Islamic Art of Uncertain spatial relationships including those of background and foreground and more specifically here of how to distinguish and differentiate between spatial planes on the silk mat red defines both horizontal and vertical space the ground for the representations of the prophet's footsteps and the floor where the worshiper also would stand in prayer and the backdrop backdrop or wall in front of which The Columns and arches rise on the carpet the color while physically confined between the prayer Niche columns and beneath the arch again defines the flat space where prayers are performed and at the same time reads as architectural volume as well as the space beyond which Beyond which prayers flow red thus becomes the locus of multiple functions of standing kneeling and prostrating of looking down through and Beyond as if in a doorway as in the mikhrab of the great mosque here at Cordoba for instance and of praying and sending those prayers through to a still higher sphere and finally for a look at how the various functions of red as Focus highlight animator and backdrop work together in Islamic art for this we may turn most frequently to fruitfully to pictorial imagery and especially to the tradition of manuscript painting as it developed during the 14th 15th and 16th centuries where we find numerous examples of how red both structures of composition and directs the viewer's eye through that composition often buys propinquity to other specific colors particularly blue and we had a question about that earlier and I'm not going to get into it either maybe we can discuss it in in discussion later Red's dual structural and directional role though by no means absent from other painting Traditions assumes perhaps even in Greater importance within the conceptual framework of classical Islamic miniature painting where all the components trees plants humans animals and so forth coexist in a hierarchy of visual values determined by the flatness and size of the piece of paper on which they are painted examples abound but I'll we'll confine ourselves to a few actually maybe just one in the interest of time I don't know when I started speaking Jonathan oh right I'll do one one here um an early 15th century copy of one of the five poems by nizami the great Persian poet whom we've just heard about from Dr Masami this particular narrative Illustrated here recounts how the sculptor Farhad visits Queen Shirin and her Palace we enter both painting and Palace through the bright red table in the foreground placed next to a kneeling attendant who wears a slightly paler shade of red for his robe here and a darker color red for his hat and who offers a platter to his mistress a tired and salmon pink so here there's a triumvirate a triangle of Reds that leads us into the painting and immediately identifies the focus of narrative attention Farhad by contrast is a secondary protagonist the central unit defined by Reds is then highlighted on the sides by other touches of red the Robes of the two standing figures at the left flanking a third man with a red turbine cap no fewer than five of the eight figures on the right where red including the woman standing behind the window Grill up above red curtains drape across the composition's middle Zone simultaneously framing the windows and pointed arched units and forming a rhythmic pattern that is to say activating um descending and ascending Contours mimicked by Red blossoms that draw together and unites the three figure Blossom groupings below the these Vivid red drapery swags in turn lead up to the flat wall of the pinkish brickwork similar in tone to Red to shireen's robe on the lower level again red curtains frame Windows which in turn contribute to the overall symmetry of the composition and at the same time lead us upwards to the central faceted balcony essentially a Mirador we each of the four figures wears an item of red clothing and where a single red band produces the provides the visual cornice it might be possible of course to analyze the same painting in a very similar way through its use of blue and indeed red and blue are in direct relationship relation to each other as pictorial colors and balance each other when placed side by side under composition as this one but red is optically the stronger and warmer of the two it advances while red While Blue recedes a characteristic that the painter who designed and executed This Charming painting understood full well and exploited in the service of his composition's visual Focus movement balance and Harmony in short the formal attributes that Persian painters of the late 14th and early 15th century and I would venture to say that Islamic artists through throughout the history of Islamic Art aim to achieve I'll end here because I know we want to have time still for discussion and I can perhaps bring up some other points at that discussion thank you very much [Applause]