Dragon in foliage with lion and phoenix heads (mid-1500s): Art, History and Details

Dragon in foliage with lion and phoenix heads (mid-1500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Sahkulu (Turkish, active 1526–56).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

A dragon lunges toward a pearl in the form of a seal inscribed with a verse from the Koran: “And I commit my case unto God” (40:44). In his front claw, the dragon grasps two flowering branches that magically produce a variety of blooms, including a lion that bites the dragon’s neck and a phoenix, who competes for the pearl. Sahkulu was trained by Persian artists, as were many artists of Mughal India during the 1500s. He joined the Ottoman imperial painting atelier in Istanbul in 1526 and became the head in 1545.

Object facts

• Title: Dragon in foliage with lion and phoenix heads
• Date: mid-1500s
• Creator attribution: Sahkulu (Turkish, active 1526–56)
• Culture: Ottoman Turkey, Istanbul
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: Ink, gum tempera, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Sheet: 17.3 x 40.2 cm (6 13/16 x 15 13/16 in.)
• Collection: Islamic Art
• Department: Islamic Art
• Accession number: 1944.492

A detail from the museum

The lion head and phoenix head are part of the foliage, like fantastical blossoms.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Islamic Art: Selected Examples from the Loan Exhibition of Islamic Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art. [Cleveland]: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1944.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.