WEST ANATOLIA, 17TH CENTURY

The design of the present rug was named after Domenico Ghirlandaio, the mid-15th century Italian artist who depicted a rug with this design in his painting, Madonna Enthroned for the church of San Giusto alle Mura which is now in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, (depicted below). While the exact type of rug depicted in this painting has never been found, the field design of the present lot and associated carpets are similar in style to the painted rug. This design can be encountered in Turkish carpets dating back to the fifteenth century but which continues to be seen well into the nineteenth century. Şerare Yetkin classifies the rug depicted by Ghirlandaio, and by association similar rugs, as type III Holbein carpets based on the octagon-in-squares centres of the medallions (Ş.Yetkin, Historical Turkish Carpets, Istanbul, 1981, pp.59-65).

Three other rugs similar to the present rug are also known: one in a German private collection (M. Volkmann, Alte Orientteppiche, Munich, 1985, no.18), one which sold in the Bernheimer Family Collection of Carpets, in these Rooms, 14 February 1996, lot 110, now in the Zaleski Collection, Italy, and one which sold in these Rooms, 26 October 2017, lot 306. Like ours, the Christie's example has only one medallion but is set against a more open green field. The Volkmann and the Bernheimer are similarly on shaded emerald-green fields but rather than a single centralised medallion they have double medallions. All four rugs share the same cruciform motif border. This cruciform motif can be seen in other Anatolian rugs both as border and field design and is the subject of much discussion by Werner Brüggemann (W. Brüggemann and H. Böhmer, Rugs of the Peasants and Nomads of Anatolia, Munich, 1983, pp.60-70). Writing in Volkmann, Brüggemann points out that the use of this border divided into quadrants by colour is uncommon in connection with 'Ghirlandaio' carpets (Volkmann, op.cit., p.56).