Dragon in foliage with lion and phoenix heads
attributed to Sahkulu (Turkish, active 1526–56)
mid-1500s
- Medium
- Ink, gum tempera, and gold on paper
- Classification
- Drawing
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 17.3 x 40.2 cm (6 13/16 x 15 13/16 in.)
- Culture
- Ottoman Turkey, Istanbul
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Islamic Art
- Credit line
- Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
A dragon lunges toward a pearl in the form of a seal inscribed with a verse from the Koran: “And I commit my case unto God” (40:44). In his front claw, the dragon grasps two flowering branches that magically produce a variety of blooms, including a lion that bites the dragon’s neck and a phoenix, who competes for the pearl.
Sahkulu was trained by Persian artists, as were many artists of Mughal India during the 1500s. He joined the Ottoman imperial painting atelier in Istanbul in 1526 and became the head in 1545.
