What is ottoman miniature art?

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It was a part of the Ottoman book arts, together with illumination (tezhip), calligraphy (hat), marbling paper (ebru), and bookbinding (cilt). This is the name given to the art of producing very finely detailed, small paintings. In Europe in the Middle Ages, handwritten manuscripts would be decorated by painting capital letters red. Lead oxide, known as 'minium' in Latin and which gave a particularly pleasant colour, was used for this purpose. That is where the word 'miniature' derives from.  The words taswir or nakish were used to define the art of miniature painting in Ottoman Turkish. The studios the artists worked in were called Nakkashanes. The artist was known as a 'nakkaş' or 'musavvir.' 

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Nakkas Osman (often known as Osman the Miniaturist) was the most important miniature painter of the period,

Matrakci Nasuh created a new painting genre called topographic painting. He painted cities, ports, and castles without any human figures and combined scenes observed from different viewpoints in one picture.

The point of view developed by Levni has both influenced later artists and opened a path of innovations in the Ottoman art of depiction. Levni’s high skill in expressing his open minded character has made him a key figure in a turning point of Ottoman art history., 

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With the introduction of printing press and later photography, no more illuminated picture manuscripts were produced. From then on, wall paintings or oil paintings on toils were popular. The miniature painting thus lost its function. After a period of crisis in the beginning of the 20th century, miniature painting was accepted as a "decorative art" by the intellectuals of the newly founded Turkish Republic and in 1936, a division called "Turkish Decorative Arts" was established in the Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul, which included miniature painting together with the other Ottoman book arts.

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Contemporary artists usually do not consider miniature painting as merely a "decorative art" but as a fine art form. Different from the traditional masters of the past, they work individually and sign their works. Also, their works are not illustrating books, as was the case with the original Ottoman miniatures, but being exhibited in fine art galleries.

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