ARABESQUE (Fr.), means merely after the Arabian, manner; and, so far as etymology is concerned, might therefore be general in its application. In practice, however, it is used to characterize a peculiar kind of fantastic. decoration commonly employed in con junction with architecture, and which the Spanish Moors are supposed to have introduced into modern Europe. But the species of enrichment to which this term is now applied, was extensively employed both by the Greeks and Romans, the latter in particular being masters of the style. The Egyptians, from whom the Moors probably derived their original notions of this and other forms of art, also employed it in enriching their monu mental decorat ins. But the A. of the Moors differed from that of the Egyptians in entirely exciud, g the figures of animals, the representation of which was forbidden by the Mohammede religion, and confining itself entirely to the foliage, flowers, fruit, and tendrils of plants and trees, curiously and elaborately intertwined. This limitation of the field of A. was again departed from when the decorations were discovered on the walls of the baths of Titus, in the time of Leo X.; and more recently those in the-houses
at Herculaneum and Pompeii came to form the models of imitation, and the modern A. consists usually of combinations of plants, birds, and animals of all kinds, including the human figure, and embracing not only every natural variety,but stepping without hesitation beyond the bounds of nature. The freedom with which it admits the fantastic is, indeed, the leading peculiarity of A.; and as it is found in some form amongst every people who have attempted to give a visible representation of their fancies, it is spoken of by F: Schlegel as " the oldest and original form of fancy." The arabesques with which Raphael adorned the galleries of the Vatican, and which he is said to have imitated from those which he had been instrumental in discovering in the baths of Titus, are at once the most famous and the most beautiful which the modern world has produced. Arabesques are usually painted, though the term is also applied to sculptural representations of similar subjects in low relief.