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Lot Essay
This magnificent Lotto carpet retains both the vibrant colour and the accurately drawn motifs which typifies the best of these carpets. It is not surprising that the editors of Hali, when reviewing its sale in 1978, called it "the finest example of its type to come onto the market for decades".
A small number of related carpets have survived. The largest examples tend to have complete cartouches in the border while the medium sized and smaller examples have the part-cartouches seen here. The best known is probably that in the Bargello Musuem in Florence (Suriano, Carlo Maria: "Patterns Of Patronage, Classical Carpets in the Bargello Museum, Florence", Hali 83, October/November 1985, pp.84-85 and pl.9). The footnote to that entry (note 18, p.116) gives details of twelve other comparable examples. There are similarly a few slightly smaller examples comparable to the present carpet. One with a green ground border was with Bausback in Mannheim (Hali 107, November/December 1999, advertisement p.49), one with much stiffer drawing is in the Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna (Hali 42, November/December 1988, p.30), while another very worn example is in the Jim Dixon Collection, California (Hali, 109, March/April 2000, p.101). This border is also found on a number of smaller rugs, normally with the cartouches bisected rather than, as here, clearly showing part of the second half of each.
The earliest of the group can be dated to the middle of the sixteenth century on the basis of a painting by Jacopo del Ponte in Rome dateable to around 1560 which appears to show the half cartouche version of this border (Mills, op.cit., p.282, no.16). The same border appears with greater regularity immediately after 1600 in paintings from the Netherlands and England (Mills, op.cit.nos.28-30). The majority of paintings after 1600 however appear to show smaller rugs, many of which are displayed on tables. They are much more likely therefore to be similar to lot 184 in the sale which follows this one rather than a carpet that relates directly to the present one.
Kurt Erdmann suggested that the "Lotto" design was a development of the "small pattern Holbein" design, opening it up to be come an overall pattern (Erdmann, Kurt: The early Turkish Carpet, London, 1977, p.31). Indeed, he at times ignores the "Lotto" brand and prefers to style then "Holbein type II" carpets. In this theory he has been followed by most authorities, even if the "Lotto" name has remained. A very interesting fragment in a private collection however could challenge this assumption. Drawn with what could be either a degenerate or prototype of this pattern, it has been carbon-dated to well before the sixteenth century, which is the time when Erdmann rationalises the present design to have been created. It opens the possibility that the design developed from the much earlier Turkish tradition of two-tone overall lattice carpets, such as those of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, far more directly than had been previously thought.
Whatever the origins it is not surprising, bearing in mind its quality, grandeur, and state of preservation that this is the carpet that John Mills used as the archetype for the entire group in his seminal article.
A small number of related carpets have survived. The largest examples tend to have complete cartouches in the border while the medium sized and smaller examples have the part-cartouches seen here. The best known is probably that in the Bargello Musuem in Florence (Suriano, Carlo Maria: "Patterns Of Patronage, Classical Carpets in the Bargello Museum, Florence", Hali 83, October/November 1985, pp.84-85 and pl.9). The footnote to that entry (note 18, p.116) gives details of twelve other comparable examples. There are similarly a few slightly smaller examples comparable to the present carpet. One with a green ground border was with Bausback in Mannheim (Hali 107, November/December 1999, advertisement p.49), one with much stiffer drawing is in the Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna (Hali 42, November/December 1988, p.30), while another very worn example is in the Jim Dixon Collection, California (Hali, 109, March/April 2000, p.101). This border is also found on a number of smaller rugs, normally with the cartouches bisected rather than, as here, clearly showing part of the second half of each.
The earliest of the group can be dated to the middle of the sixteenth century on the basis of a painting by Jacopo del Ponte in Rome dateable to around 1560 which appears to show the half cartouche version of this border (Mills, op.cit., p.282, no.16). The same border appears with greater regularity immediately after 1600 in paintings from the Netherlands and England (Mills, op.cit.nos.28-30). The majority of paintings after 1600 however appear to show smaller rugs, many of which are displayed on tables. They are much more likely therefore to be similar to lot 184 in the sale which follows this one rather than a carpet that relates directly to the present one.
Kurt Erdmann suggested that the "Lotto" design was a development of the "small pattern Holbein" design, opening it up to be come an overall pattern (Erdmann, Kurt: The early Turkish Carpet, London, 1977, p.31). Indeed, he at times ignores the "Lotto" brand and prefers to style then "Holbein type II" carpets. In this theory he has been followed by most authorities, even if the "Lotto" name has remained. A very interesting fragment in a private collection however could challenge this assumption. Drawn with what could be either a degenerate or prototype of this pattern, it has been carbon-dated to well before the sixteenth century, which is the time when Erdmann rationalises the present design to have been created. It opens the possibility that the design developed from the much earlier Turkish tradition of two-tone overall lattice carpets, such as those of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, far more directly than had been previously thought.
Whatever the origins it is not surprising, bearing in mind its quality, grandeur, and state of preservation that this is the carpet that John Mills used as the archetype for the entire group in his seminal article.