THE ART OF THE ISLAMIC BOOK, 12501600-- Article Review - Essay Example

Roxburgh stressed that “what Lentz and Lowry’s study could not do, on account of various constraints, was pursue a micrology process, but what was neither their stated brief nor their aim… One of the general observations that they do offer about features of drawings is that in the hundreds of drawings contained in the Baysunghur album in particular, we see the progression toward a visual typology.” ( 47) In light of these, the author distinguished his work as based on a visual analysis of hundreds of drawings and what can be deduced from it.

However, he stressed that they were not supported by current scientific imaging techniques because, as stated, non-destructive testing methods are so rudimentary and that non-invasive methods of physical analysis are also not readily available. Roxburgh’s argument is that much can be accomplished outside the laboratory using the eye alone. In the course of the author’s analysis of the Persian drawings, he focused on three salient factors: the materials and methods used by artists in the process of design, the draftsman’s repertoire of mark making, and the methods employed by artists in the production of compositions for manuscript paintings.

Roxburgh’s findings give us interesting insights. To start with, according to him, despite evidence that drawings were regarded as a fragile and dispensable detritus, as a processual compost, the mountain of evidence preserved in albums is powerful proof that drawings had a creative currency and at some point came to be valued for their own sake. (44) He also stressed that the conceptual and practical links between writing and drawing must have been palpable even if a written statement to that effect would not be expressed until the early years of sixteenth century.

Roxburgh noted that the absence of a corpus of drawings that can be linked directly to a finished object, a fact that precludes