arabesque, style of decoration characterized by intertwining plants and abstract curvilinear motifs. Derived from the work of Hellenistic craftsmen working in Asia Minor, the arabesque originally included birds in a highly naturalistic setting. As adapted by Muslim artisans about ad 1000, it became highly formalized; for religious reasons, no birds, beasts, or human figures were included. The arabesque became an essential part of the decorative tradition of Islāmic cultures.
In Europe from the Renaissance until the early 19th century, arabesques were used for the decoration of illuminated manuscripts, walls, furniture, metalwork, and pottery. These designs usually were composed of either twining or sinuous scrolls of branches and leaves or ornate lines abstracted from such natural forms. Human figures often were integral to Western arabesque designs. Though the word had meant simply “Arabian” in 16th-century France, it was defined in a dictionary of 1611 as “rebesque work, a small and curious flourishing.”
The earliest Western models inspiring the work of early Renaissance Italian artists were actually ancient Roman stucchi, plaster models found in Roman tombs. Arabesque stonework was designed by the mid-15th century, and painting in the style executed by Giulio Romano and the pupils of Raphael decorated the open galleries, or loggie, of the Vatican in the following century. Delicate silverwork of northern Italy and, later, Spain also used the motifs, and they began to appear in the decoration of majolica at Urbino, armour at Milan, tapestry at Florence, and illuminated manuscripts at Mantua.
Renaissance arabesques maintained the classical tradition of median symmetry, freedom in detail, and heterogeneity of ornament. The arabesque of this period also allowed the inclusion of a broad range of elements—human beings, beasts, birds, fishes, flowers—in imaginative or fantasy scenes, usually with copious interlacings of vines, ribbons, or the like.
With the coming of the Baroque, the use of arabesque decoration fell into disfavour until the middle of the 18th century, when a new series of Roman arabesques was discovered at Herculaneum. In 1757 the Comte de Caylus published his Recueil de peintures antiques (“Collection of Ancient Paintings”), and by 1770 engraved models for arabesques again were being published in Paris. The late reliefs and paintings are among the most beautiful arabesques ever produced, but the formality of Directoire and Empire design after the Revolution gradually ended the fashion.