Visual Characteristics of Sajarah Banten Manuscript Illustrations

Abstract

Banten Sultanate was an Islamic kingdom in the western part of Java island, and one of important international port in the 15^th through 19^th century. There were different cultures interacted in Banten, such as from the European, Chinese, Indians, and merchant from Muslim-dominant areas such as Middle East. As a cosmopolitan, the illustrations of one of its historical manuscripts, Sajarah Banten KBG 183 would have distinct visual characteristics. This paper would try to find those characteristics by applying compositional analysis to observe their compositional, technological, and productional modalities. Later, semiotic method would be applied to scrutinize the signs used in the visualization of Sajarah Banten illustrations. The result showed that the illustrations characteristically used firm technical lines and minimalistic colors. The story characters were not drawn and only represented by objects alluding to their positions or activities. These visual characteristics were likely influenced by Islamic art aesthetics of aniconism and European technical drawings of 19^th century.

Keywords: Banten, illustration, manuscript, visual characteristics.

DOI: 10.7176/ADS/89-04

Publication date: January 31^st 2021