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Comment by hcho | Hacker News Reader

That was deliberate. Drawing was/is considered practicing idolatry in muslim cultures. The way around it was/is to draw things in a way that they resembled the subject the least, but still recognizable.

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That is incorrect. Painting/drawing on 2D surfaces had not yet developed perspective. All art, European, Chinese, Native American, Muslim had this flat perspective. It had nothing to do with religion. These were scientists drawing. If they knew how to draw with perspective they would have. The renaissance is partly called that because of the leap in 2D visualization capabilities by artists. Even when you look at Greek art in the time when they had detailed realistic sculpture the art on 2D surfaces was all without perspective.

Edit: regarding the religious aspect, modern Muslims still consider pictorial representations of Muhammed as blasphemous and wouldn't produce even a 2D caricature. However the whole "art bad!" thing you see on the news is one of Daesh's (ISIS) twisted mutations of the religion. Not a Muslim, but that's how I understand it.

Broadly correct. Differing Muslim cultures had different approaches to the problem, we generally consider Persian miniatures to be well-painted (though without perspective), and they typically just make a token line through the throat of human subjects to suggest they couldn't really be like the drawing (the prophet Muhammad is generally shown with only a glowing face without features to avoid even coming close to the problem of poorly representing him). Of course, it's no coincidence that visual arts in the Islamic world took patterns (which we still call arabesques) to very high level, and also calligraphy, as they don't have any representational worries.

Oh that's right! I had forgotten about the throat line. And that even when drawing not-Muhammed there was concern that it may be seen as a depiction of Muhammed. Thank you for the clarification.

Aren't there people who argue that Brunelleschi rediscovered perspective?

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