The arabesque was designed to run on past its frame
Look closely at an Islamic arabesque and the stems don't stop at the border. They slip under the frame as if the pattern carries on forever. That endless quality, rare in earlier plant ornament, is what sets the arabesque apart. Many popular stories about what it means have no documentary support.
Art historians use the word in a narrow sense: scrolling, interlacing foliage built from stylised half-palmette leaves on spiralling stems, found in Islamic art from about the 9th century and in European decoration from the Renaissance on. It probably took its distinct Islamic form in Baghdad around the 10th century, first appearing in carved marble panels. It grew out of the plant scrolls of the lands the early Islamic conquests absorbed; the 8th-century mosaics of the Great Mosque of Damascus, for example, were made by Byzantine artists in their usual style.
Over time the plants became less and less real. Early examples like the Mshatta Facade still show vines with grapes, but later arabesques imitate no particular species and are often botanically impossible, with new stems sprouting from leaf tips. By the 11th century the distinctly Islamic type was complete. Flowers were rare until about 1500, when they became common, especially in Ottoman work with its large feathery saz leaves. Eventually floral motifs borrowed from Chinese porcelain displaced the arabesque on pottery, textiles and miniatures.
Its meaning is disputed. Claims that the arabesque expresses a specific Islamic theology are common, but medieval Islamic artists left no written statements of their intentions, and scholars are divided over how much geometric knowledge the designers needed; the link to mathematics is stronger for the straight-line geometric patterns often paired with it. The popular idea that artists added deliberate mistakes because only God is perfect is also contested. What is clear is that, because Islamic art generally avoided figures, the arabesque could take centre stage in major buildings.
Its modern study began with Alois Riegl's 1893 book on the history of ornament, which traced plant motifs from ancient Egypt through Greece and Rome to Islam. Jessica Rawson later extended the lineage to China. The word itself comes through French from the Italian arabesco, in the Arabic style.
Source: Arabesque
