Arabesque facts for kids

Stone relief with arabesques in the Umayyad Mosque, Damascus

Border decoration to an Ottoman miniature, early 16th century

Arabesque is an artistic decoration. It uses "surface decorations based on... interlacing foliage, tendrils" or plain lines. Another definition is "Foliate ornament, used in the Islamic world, typically using leaves... combined with spiralling stems".

Arabesques are usually of a single design which can be 'tiled' or repeated as many times as desired.

The term "arabesque" is used as a technical term by art historians for decoration in Islamic art from about the 9th century onwards, and European decorative art from the Renaissance onwards. Note that Islamic geometric patterns are a different style from arabesques.

Decorative panel from Abbasid Samarra, 9th century

Images for kids

• 

  Part of a 15th-century ceramic panel from Samarkand (Uzbekistan) with white calligraphy on a blue arabesque background

• 

  The "Tellus Panel" from the Ara Pacis, in Rome, circa 27 AD. The lower part of the panel is an example of a Roman arabesque

• 

  Design for a Louis XVI style arabesque, by Étienne de La Vallée Poussin, circa 1780-1793, pen and gray and brown ink, brush and colored wash, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

• 

  Arabesque pattern behind hunters on ivory plaque, 11th–12th century, Egypt

• 

  Three modes: arabesques, geometric patterns, and calligraphy used together in the Court of the Myrtles of Alhambra (Granada, Spain)

• 

  The French sense of arabesque: a Savonnerie carpet in the Louis XIV style, circa 1685-1697, made of wool, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City)

• 

  What is called the "Arabesque Room" in the Catherine Palace, with neoclassical grotesque decoration

• 

  Mosaics on the Treasury Dome of the Great Mosque of Damascus, 789, still in essentially Byzantine style

• 

  Palace facade from Mshatta in Jordan, c.740, now in the Pergamon Museum (Berlin)

• 

  Ivory pyxid, 10th century, in the Louvre

• 

  Panel with horse heads, 11th century, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City)

• 

  Ottoman tughra of Suleiman the Magnificent, with flowers and saz leaves, 1520

• 

  Iznik tile panel with flowers, 1550-1600, in the Louvre

• 

  Iznik tile, 1560, in the Museum of Islamic Art from Doha (Qatar)

• 

  Iznik tiled lunette panel that may have come from the Piyale Pasha Mosque in Istanbul, 1570-1575, in the Victoria and Albert Museum from London

• 

  Giant arabesque pattern on the dome of the Sheikh Lotfallah Mosque from Isfahan (Iran), 17th century

• 

  "Rosette bearing the names and titles of shah Jahan", folio from the shah Jahan album, circa 1645, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

• 

  Byzantine mosaics with arabesques on a ceiling from the Basilica of San Vitale (Ravenna, Italy)

• 

  French arabesque garden planting at Vaux-le-Vicomte, in low box hedges on pink gravel

• 

  French 18th century Neoclassical grotesque decor at Chateau de Fontainebleau; this would probably have been described as arabesque by its makers

• 

  Neoclassical arabesques in the Tullgarn Palace from Sweden

• 

  Renaissance Revival cast iron door window grill of a building on the Boulevard du Temple from Paris

• 

  Renaissance Revival cast iron door window grill of a building on Rue du Bac from Paris

• 

  Door with arabesques painted on it, in the Dimitrie Sturdza House from Bucharest (Romania)

• 

  Arabesque with a mascaron and a cartouche, on a façade of an 1890s or 1900s city-house from Bucharest

• 

  Art Nouveau arabesque on a façade of a city-house from Bucharest

See also

In Spanish: Arabesco para niños