Deccani marbled-paper drawings

In 1912 F. R. Martin published three marbled drawings and attributed them to Ottoman Turkey, suggesting that marbling began in Tabriz at least by the fifteenth century and reached Turkey in the sixteenth, the colours applied while the paper was wet. He praised their harmonious colours and the gold lines that define their outlines, and noted how Turkish connoisseurs prized this costly, rare coloured paper. ²

The earliest description is Lord Bacon's in Sylva Sylvarum (1627): the Turks put drops of various oiled colours on water, stir it lightly and wet thin paper with it, so that the paper comes out "waved and veined like chamolet or marble". ³ See also manuscript paper preparation.

Mark Zebrowski argues that many surviving marbled drawings were made in the Deccan, not Iran or Turkey: some of the best are in Deccani collections or were acquired there; their faces and costumes are distinctly Bijapuri, close to the late years of Ibrahim Adil Shah II and the reign of Muhammad Adil Shah; and the swirling mauve, blue and yellow clouds of Deccani paintings imitate marbled paper, as in the Bijapuri Deer Hunt. Marbled paper itself served in Deccani manuscripts as end-papers and painting borders. ³

They include a Dervish and Pet Cat in the Salar Jang Museum, a Kneeling Dervish in the Binney Collection, and starving horses, which Martin derived from European engravings of Death and which Annemarie Schimmel reads as the lower instincts a mystic must starve to reach enlightenment. ^{3 4}