Collection: Ottoman Miniatures

Ottoman Miniature painting flourished at the imperial court in Istanbul from the late fifteenth century through the eighteenth, with its high point under Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566) and his immediate successors. The discipline drew on Persian Safavid and Timurid models, brought to the Ottoman capital through workshops staffed initially by painters of Iranian and Tabrizi training, but it developed a distinct programme oriented toward documentary illustration of court ceremony, military campaign, and topography rather than the poetic narrative cycles that dominated Persian miniature.

The Nakkaşhane, the imperial workshop attached to the Topkapı Palace, served as the institutional centre. Matrakçı Nasuh (c. 1480–1564) developed the topographic mode, illustrating Süleyman's campaigns and producing accurate city views of Istanbul, Cairo, and the cities of the Iraqi route. Nakkaş Osman, working with the court chronicler Lokman in the second half of the sixteenth century, produced the great illustrated manuscripts of the Süleymanname, the Şehname-i Selim Han, the Hünername (1584–88), and the Surname-i Hümayun of 1582 documenting the circumcision festival of Murat III's son. Nakkaş Osman fixed the Ottoman idiom of figures in formal hierarchical composition against precise architectural settings. Levni (Abdulcelil Çelebi), working in the early eighteenth century under Ahmed III, opened the tradition toward softer single page album painting in the Tulip Era.