INFLUENCE OF ISLAMIC AESTHETICS
ON WESTERN ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Images speak louder than only claims

A survey of Western pictorial heritage makes it very clear to us. The rising advent of Islam on Europe was not only affecting its science and philosophy. It was also directly influencing its aesthetics. Scholars of the old Western world freely acknowledged it, and it became unfashionable in a wave against Islam to mention these things. But facts do not go away, by wishing them to evapourate. We need not write books for same. A few images can be enough for elucidation.

When the Madonna herself is cloaked in Islamic dress, what does that mean? It shows that the idea even penetrated the most rigid clergy of the beauty of Islamic traditions. The most sacred icon of the Madonna can be clothed in Islamic terms mean total belief in the supremacy of the new aesthetics. Various artists had their inspiration in different ways. All this is well known, nothing new here. At times repeating is essential to remind us that we are one on Planet Earth.

The romance of Islamic Art and Architecture is even there today as western circles try to emulate the splendours of the Sultans as well as the Mughals in duplication of projects today, all over the world. We will touch some of these projects soon.