Painting

The only good copies are those which exhibit the defects of bad originals.

Ottoman miniature painting gave up the warmth, the whimsy, the theatricality, and the multiple meanings of Iranian art in favor of realism, which was also expressed in Ottoman maps, fortress plans and geographies.

In general, just as painters in working from models constantly gaze at their exemplar and thus strive to transfer the expression of the original to their own artistry, so too he who is anxious to make himself perfect in all the kinds of virtue must gaze upon the lives of the saints as upon statues, so to speak, that move and act, and must make their excellence his own by imitation.