Pseudo-Kufic

Left image: pseudo-Kufic script on the hem of the Virgin's mantle in Filippo Lippi's 1438 Pala Barbadori. Louvre Museum.
Right image: at the top, detail of the Virgin's mantle hem in Antonio Vivarini's Saint Louis de Toulouse, 1450. At the bottom, detail of Virgin's mantle hem in Jacopo Bellini's Virgin of Humility, 1440. Louvre Museum.

Pseudo-Kufic, or Kufesque, also sometimes pseudo-Arabic,^[1] is a style of decoration used during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,^[2] consisting of imitations of the Arabic Kufic script, or sometimes Arabic cursive script, made in a non-Arabic context: "Imitations of Arabic in European art are often described as pseudo-Kufic, borrowing the term for an Arabic script that emphasizes straight and angular strokes, and is most commonly used in Islamic architectural decoration".^[3] Pseudo-Kufic appears especially often in Renaissance art in depictions of people from the Holy Land, particularly the Virgin Mary. It is an example of Islamic influences on Western art.