The State Hermitage Museum: Information

On Islamic Art
Mikhail Piotrovsky
St. Petersburg, Slaviya Publishers, 2001

In 2001 the publishing house Slavia published the book On Islamic Art by the director of the State Hermitage, Mikhail Piotrovsky, Doctor of Historical Sciences

The author writes: "There are two ideas in Islamic art that occur repeatedly at various levels with varying degrees of clarity and directness, both of them clamping art securely to religion. The first idea is that of the reality of God.

Art contains many allusions to the image of God, which people cannot apprehend. It nevertheless provides the aesthetic possibility of referring to His Being as the very essence of beauty and goodness, and the promise that meeting with Him will be something indescrib-ably sublime. The second idea is that of a Paradise to come, created for the just to inhabit, a place of peace and plenitude. Almost all Islamic art is a reminder of this, Beautiful objects, exquisite buildings serve not only to delight the Muslim in this world; they are a promise of grace to come. They are the hopeful confirmation that the religion of Islam is the one true faith.
The two religions, Islam and Christianity, are not dissimilar...We should not forget, that Islamic art and the art of Christian tradition are after all two branches of the same tree."

Articles devoted to the religion and art of Islam and the Koran are combined in the book with accounts of the masterpieces of Islamic art in the State Hermitage collection.

The book is richly illustrated has been published in Russian and English.

Mikhail Piotrovsky On Islamic Art
St Petersburg. Slavia, 2001.144 pp., 103 colour ill.