Book illumination and architectural decoration : the Mausoleum of Uljaytu in Sultaniyya

Abstract

This thesis examines the conventions of two-dimensional articulation in architecture and its relationship to book illumination in early fourteenth century Iran. By examining the illuminations in a series of imperial Qurans copied in the first quarter of the fourteenth century and comparing them to the architectural decoration of contemporaneous buildings in llkhanid Iran, the thesis proposes that it is the rigor of geometric elaboration in two-dimensional planes that make such a comparison across media plausible. The taste for increasingly complex two-dimensional geometric extrapolations and the creation of layered surfaces, such as those exhibited in the decorative designs of the Mausoleum of Uljaytu in Sultaniyya, Iran, ultimately engender a perception of architecture that alludes visually to an rendition of two dimensional space that is common to both painting and architecture.