Miniature art or model art is a genre that focuses on art (especially painting, engraving and sculpture) in much-smaller-than-usual sizes. Miniature art societies, such as the World Federation of Miniaturists(WFM), provide applicable definitions of the term.[1] An often-used definition is that a piece of miniature art is capable of being held in the palm of the hand, or that it covers less than 100 cm².

Miniature art has been made for over 1000 years and is prized by collectors. The U.S. White House, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and museums around the world have collections of miniature art.[citation needed]

A Persian miniature is a small painting on paper, whether a book illustration or a separate work of art intended to be kept in an album of such works called a   muraqqa . The techniques are broadly comparable to the Western and Byzantine traditions of miniatures in illuminated manuscripts. Although there is an equally well-established Persian tradition of wall-painting, the survival rate and state of preservation of miniatures is better, and miniatures are much the best-known form of Persian painting in the West, and many of the most important examples are in Western, or Turkish, museums. Miniature painting became a significant Persian genre in the 13th century, receiving Chinese influence after the Mongol conquests, and the highest point in the tradition was reached in the 15th and 16th centuries. The tradition continued, under some Western influence, after this, and has many modern exponents. The Persian miniature was the dominant influence on other Islamic miniature traditions, principally the Ottoman miniature in Turkey, and the Mughal miniature in the Indian sub-continent..

Persian art under Islam had never completely forbidden the human figure, and in the miniature tradition the depiction of figures, often in large numbers, is central. This was partly because the miniature is a private form, kept in a book or album and only shown to those the owner chooses. It was therefore possible to be more free than in wall paintings or other works seen by a wider audience. The Qu'ran and other purely religious works are not known to have been illustrated in this way, though histories and other works of literature may include religiously related scenes, including thosedepicting the Prophet Muhammed, after 1500 usually without showing his face.[1] As well as the figurative scenes in miniatures, which this article concentrates on, there was a parallel style of non-figurative ornamental decoration which was found in borders and panels in miniature pages, and spaces at the start or end of a work or section, and often in whole pages acting as frontispieces. In Islamic art this is referred to as "illumination", and manuscripts of the Qu'ran and other religious books often included considerable number of illuminated pages.[2] The designs reflected contemporary work in other media, in later periods being especially close to book-

covers and Persian carpets, and it is thought that many carpet designs were created by court artists and sent to the workshops in the provinces.[3]

Ottoman Miniature or Turkish miniature was an art form in the Ottoman Empire, which can be linked to the Persian miniature tradition,[1] as well as strong Chinese artistic influences. It was a part of the Ottoman Book Arts together with illumination (tezhip), calligraphy (hat), marbling paper (ebru) and bookbinding (cilt). The words taswir or nakish were used to define this art in Ottoman language. The studios the artists worked in were called Nakkashane. The miniatures were not signed. This is partly because of the world view of the tradition that rejected individualism. Another reason is that the works were not created entirely by one person: The head painter designed the composition of the scene and his apprentices drew the contours (which is called tahrir) with black or colored ink and then painted the miniature without creating an illusion of third dimension. The head painter, and much more often the scribe of the text were named and depicted in some of the manuscripts. The understanding of perspective is different from that of European Renaissance Painting tradition and the scene depicted may include different time periods and spaces. The miniatures followed closely the context of the book, resembling illustrations of the picture books today. The colors were obtained by ground powder pigments mixed with egg-white and later with diluted gum arabic. The colors were brilliant. Contrasting colors were used side by side with warm colors that reminds us of the 20th century avant-garde painters' approach in color selection. The color nuances of the same shade were applied in a masterly fashion. The most used colors were bright red, scarlet, green and different shades of blue.

The world-view underlying the Ottoman miniature painting was also different from that of European Renaissance Painting tradition. The painters did not mainly aim to depict the human beings and other living or non-living beings realistically, although increasing realism is found from the later 16th century onwards. Like Plato, they despised mimesis because according to the world view of sufism the appearance of worldly beings was not permanent and worth devoting effort to. The Ottoman artists wanted to hint at an infinite and transcendent reality (that is Allah, according to the Sufism's pantheistic point of view) with their paintings so they stylized and abstracted everything depicted.

Mughal painting is a particular style of South Asian painting, generally confined to miniatures either as book illustrations or as single works to be kept in albums, which emerged from Persian miniature painting, with Indian Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist influences, and developed largely in the court of the Mughal

Empire (16th - 19th centuries), and later spread to other Indian courts, both Muslim and Hindu, and later Sikh.

Origins

The art of painting developed as a blending of Persian and Indian ideas. There was already a Muslim tradition of miniature painting under the Sultanate of Delhi which the Mughals overthrew. Although the first surviving manuscripts are from Mandu in the years either side of 1500, there were very likely earlier ones which are either lost, or perhaps now attributed to southern Persia, as later manuscripts can be hard to distinguish from these by style alone, and some remain the subject of debate among specialists.[1] By the time of the Mughal invasion, the tradition had abandoned the high viewpoint typical of the Persian style, and adopted a more realistic style for animals and plants.[2]

Artists

The Persian master artists Abdus Samad and Mir Sayid Ali, who had accompanied Humayun to India, were in charge of the imperial atelier during the early formative stages of Mughal painting, but large numbers of artists worked on large commissions, the majority of them apparently Hindu, to judge by the names recorded. Mughal painting flourished during the late 16th and early 17th centuries with spectacular works of art by master artists such as Basawan, Lal, Miskin, Kesu Das, and Daswanth.

A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting, usually executed in gouache, watercolour, or enamel.

Portrait miniatures began to flourish in 16th century Europe and the art was practiced during the 17th century and 18th century. They were especially valuable in introducing people to each other over distances; a nobleman proposing the marriage of his daughter might send a courier with her portrait to visit potential suitors. Soldiers and sailors might carry miniatures of their loved ones while traveling, or a wife might keep one of her husband while he was away.

The first miniaturists used watercolour to paint on stretched vellum. During the second half of the 17th century, vitreous enamel painted on copper became increasingly popular. In the 18th century, miniatures were painted with watercolour on ivory. As small in size as 40 mm × 30 mm, portrait miniatures were often used as personal mementos or as jewellry or snuff box covers.

From the mid-19th century, the development of daguerreotypes and photography contributed to the decline in popularity of the miniatures.