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Central Asia: Two riders hunting in the snow in Central Asia, 15th century. Painting from the school of Siyah Kalem.

Central Asia: Two riders hunting in the snow  in Central Asia, 15th century. Painting from the school of Siyah Kalem.

Mehmed Siyah-Kalem was a 15th-century artist known solely by the attribution of his name to a remarkable series of paintings preserved in the Imperial Ottoman Palace Library (Topkapi Saray).

Nothing is known of his life, but his work indicates that he was of Central Asian (presumably Turkish) origin, probably from Iran or Turkestan, and thoroughly familiar with camp and military life. His paintings appear in the ‘Conqueror’s Albums’, so named because they contain two portraits of Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror.

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