Carpets of Middle-Eastern origin, either from Anatolia, Persia, Armenia, Levant, the Mamluk state of Egypt or Northern Africa, were used as decorative features in Western European paintings from the 14th century onwards. More depictions of Oriental carpets in Renaissance painting survive than actual carpets contemporary with these paintings. Few Middle-Eastern carpets produced before the 17th century remain, though the number of these known has increased in recent decades. Therefore, comparative art-historical research has from its onset in the late 19th century relied on carpets represented in datable European paintings.
Art historical background
Activities of scientists and collectors beginning in the late 19th century have substantially increased the corpus of surviving Oriental carpets, allowing for more detailed comparison of existing carpets with their painted counterparts. Western comparative research resulted in an ever more detailed cultural history of the Oriental art of carpet weaving. This has in turn renewed and inspired the scientific interest in their countries of origin. Comparative research based on Renaissance paintings and carpets preserved in museums and collections continues to contribute to the expanding body of art historical and cultural knowledge.
The tradition of precise realism among Western painters of the late 15th and 16th century provides pictorial material which is often detailed enough to justify conclusions about even minute details of the painted carpet. The carpets are treated with exceptional care in the rendering of colors, patterns, and details of form and design: The painted texture of a carpet depicted in Petrus Christus's Virgin and Child, the drawing of the individual patterns and motifs, and the way the pile opens where the carpet is folded over the steps, all suggest that the depicted textile is a pile-woven carpet.
Visually, the carpets serve to draw attention either to an important person, or to highlight a location where significant action is going on. In parallel with the development of Renaissance painting, initially mainly Christian saints and religious scenes are set out on the carpets. Later on, the carpets were integrated into secular contexts, but always served to represent the idea of opulence, exoticism, luxury, wealth, or status. First, their use was reserved for the most powerful and most wealthy, for royalty and nobility. Later, as more people gained sufficient wealth to afford goods of luxury, Oriental carpets appeared on the portraits of merchants and wealthy burghers. During the late 17th and 18th century, the interest in depicting carpets declined. In parallel, the paintings pay less attention to detail.
The richly designed Oriental carpets appealed strongly to Western painters. The rich and various colours may have influenced the great Venetian painters of the Quattrocento. It has been suggested that the pictorial representation of carpets is linked to the development of the linear perspective, which was first described by Leon Battista Alberti in 1435.
The depiction of Oriental carpets in Renaissance paintings is regarded as an important contribution to a "world history of art", based upon interactions of different cultural traditions. Rugs from the Islamic world arrived in large numbers in Western Europe by the 15th century, which is increasingly recognized as a pivotal temporal nexus in the cultural encounters that contributed to the development of Renaissance ideas, arts, and sciences. Intensified contacts, especially the increasing trade between the Islamic world and Western Europe, have provided material sources and cultural influences to Western artists during the next centuries to come. In turn, European market demands also affected the carpet production in their countries of origin.
Origin and limitations of the comparative approach
In 1871, Julius Lessing published his book on Oriental carpet design. He was relying more on European paintings than on the examination of actual carpets for lack of material, because ancient Oriental carpets were not yet collected at the time when he worked on his book. Lessing's approach has proven very useful to establish a scientific chronology of Oriental carpet weaving, and was further elaborated and expanded mainly by scholars of the "Berlin school" of History of Islamic art: Wilhelm von Bode, and his successors Friedrich Sarre, Ernst Kühnel, and Kurt Erdmann developed the "ante quem" method for the dating of oriental carpets based on Renaissance paintings.
These art historians were also aware of the fact that their scientific approach was biased: Only carpets produced by manufactories were exported to Western Europe, and consequently were available to the Renaissance artists. Village or nomadic rugs did not reach Europe during the Renaissance, and were not depicted in paintings. Not until the mid twentieth century, when collectors like Joseph V. McMullan or James F. Ballard recognized the artistic and art historic value of village or nomadic carpets, were they appreciated in the Western World.
Characteristics
Pile carpets with geometric design are known to have been produced from the 13th century among the Seljuks of Rum in eastern Anatolia, whom Venice had had commercial relations since 1220.Mack, p.74 The Medieval trader and traveler Marco Polo himself mentioned that the carpets produced at Konya were the best in the world: ...et ibi fiunt soriani et tapeti pulchriores de mundo et pulchrioris coloris. "...and here they make the most beautiful silks and carpets in the world, and with the most beautiful colours."
Carpets were also produced in Islamic Spain, and one is shown in a fresco of the 1340s in the Palais des Papes, Avignon.King & Sylvester, 10-11 The vast majority of carpets in 15th- and 16th-century paintings are either from the Ottoman Empire, or possibly European copies of these types from the Balkans, Spain, or elsewhere. In fact these were not the finest Islamic carpets of the period, and few of the top-quality Turkish "court" carpets are seen. Even finer than these, Persian carpets do not appear until the end of the 16th century, but become increasingly popular among the very wealthy in the 17th century. The very refined Mamluk carpets from Egypt are occasionally seen, mostly in Venetian paintings.King & Sylvester, 17
One of the first uses of an Oriental carpet in a European painting is Simone Martini's Saint Louis of Toulouse Crowning Robert of Anjou, King of Naples, painted in 1316–1319.Mack, p.74-75. Image Another Anatolian animal carpet appears in a c. 1340–45 Sienese panel of the Holy Family attributed to Pietro or Ambrogio Lorenzetti (Abegg-Stiftung, Riggisberg) with alternating black and white animals within colorful octagonal medallions.Burke, S. Maureen (2011). "Mary with Her Spools of Thread: Domesticating the Sacred Interior in Tuscan Trecento Art". in John Garton and Diane Wolfthal, eds., New Studies on Old Masters: Essays in Renaissance Art in Honour of Colin Eisler. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. p. 295. European depictions of Oriental carpets were extremely faithful to the originals, judging by comparison with the few surviving examples of actual rugs of contemporary date. Their larger scale also allows more detailed and accurate depictions than those shown in miniature paintings from Turkey or Persia.
Most carpets use Islamic geometric designs, with the earliest ones also using animal patterns such as the originally Chinese-inspired "phoenix-and-dragon", as in Domenico di Bartolo's Marriage of the Foundlings (1440). These had been stylised and simplified into near-geometric motifs in their transmission to the Islamic world.Mack, p.75. King & Sylvester, pp. 13, and 49-50. The whole group, referred to in the literature as "animal rugs" disappeared from paintings by about the end of the 15th century. Only a handful of original animal-pattern carpets survive, two from European churches, where their rarity presumably preserved them.King & Sylvester, pp. 49-50. The "Marby rug", one of the finest examples, was preserved in a church of the Swedish town of Marby, and a bold adaptation of an originally Chinese "dragon and phoenix" motif is in Berlin. Both are rugs, less than 2 metres long, and about 1 metre wide, with two compartments, though the Berlin carpet lacks a border down one long side.King & Sylvester, 49-50 The "Dragon and Phoenix" and the "Marby" rugs were the only existing examples of animal carpets known until 1988. Since then, seven more carpets of this type have been found. They survived in Tibetan monasteries and were removed by monks fleeing to Nepal during the Chinese cultural revolution. One of these carpets was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which parallels a painting by the Sienese artist Gregorio di Cecco, The Marriage of the Virgin, 1423. It shows large confronted animals, each with a smaller animal inside.
Although the carpets were displayed on a public floor in a few examples, most carpets on the floor are in an area reserved for the main protagonists, very often on a dais or in front of an altar, or down steps in front of the Virgin Mary or saints, or rulers,Mack, p.76 in the manner of a modern red carpet. This presumably reflected the contemporary practice of royalty; in Denmark the 16th century Persian Coronation Carpet is used under the throne for coronations to this day. They are also often hung over balustrades or out of windows for festive occasions, such as the processions through Venice shown by Vittore Carpaccio or Gentile Bellini (see gallery);King & Sylvester, p. 14 when Carpaccio's St Ursula embarks they are hung over the sides of boats and footbridges.Carpaccio image
Oriental carpets were often depicted as a decorative element in religious scenes, and were a symbol of luxury, status and taste,Mack, p.73-93 although they were becoming more widely available throughout the period, which is reflected in the paintings. In some cases, such as paintings by Gentile Bellini, the carpets reflect an early Orientalist interest, but for most painters they merely reflect the prestige of the carpets in Europe. A typical example is the Turkish carpet at the feet of the Virgin Mary in the 1456–1459 San Zeno Altarpiece by Andrea Mantegna (see detail).Mack, p.67
Non-royal portrait sitters were more likely to place their carpet on a table or other piece of furniture, especially in Northern Europe, though small rugs beside a bed are not uncommon, as in the Arnolfini Portrait of 1434.King & Sylvester, p. 20 Carpets are seen on tables in particular in Italian scenes showing the Calling of Matthew, when he was engaged in his work as a tax-collector,King & Sylvester, 14 and the life of Saint Eligius, who was a goldsmith. Both are shown sitting doing business at a carpet-covered table or shop counter.
The Oriental carpets used in Italian Renaissance painting had various geographical origins, designated in contemporary Italy by different names: the cagiarini (Mamluk design from Egypt), the damaschini (Damascus region), the barbareschi (North Africa), the rhodioti (probably imported through Rome), the turcheschi (Ottoman Empire) and the simiscasa (Circassian or Caucasian).Mack, p.77
Some of the prayer carpets represented in Christian religious paintings are Islamic prayer rugs, with such motifs as the mihrab or the Kaaba (the so-called re-entrant carpets, later called the "Bellini" type).Mack, p.84. King & Sylvester, p. 58. The representation of such prayer rugs disappeared after 1555, probably as a consequence of the realization of their religious meaning and connection to Islam.Mack, p.85.