Lot Essay
There is a group of medallion carpets ascribed by Dimand and Mailey (Dimand, D.S. and Mailey, J.: Oriental rugs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1973, p.42), stylistically to the first twenty-five years of the Safavid dynasty - approximately the reign of Shah Isma'il I (1502-1524), which include the dated medallion hunting carpet in the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan (op. cit., p.42,pl.64), that in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum (King, D. and Sylvester, D.: The Eastern Carpet in the Western World, London 1983, p.42 pl.58), the Victoria and Albert Museum example (McMullan, J.V.: Islamic Carpets in the MacMullan Collection, New York, 1965, pp.53 and 54, pls.10 and 10a) and another, once in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin, (Erdmann, K.: '"The Art of Carpet Making" in A Survey of Persian Art, Rezension', Ars Islamica, Vol.VIII, pts. 1 & 2, 1941, abb.3, p.148). Another example can without doubt be added to this group, that in the Christopher Alexander Collection in California (Alexander, C.: A Foreshadowing of 21st Century Art: The Color and Geometry of Very Early Turkish Carpets, New York and Oxford 1993, pp.182-189). A number of these carpets have at times been dated to the end of the fifteenth century rather than the first quarter of the sixteenth.
Whilst the present carpet shares a variety of features with this group including size, colour, design and motifs, these features are more pronounced in the Calouste Gulbenkian and the Christopher Alexander Collection examples. It appears that, with the estabishment of the first Safavid court, a number of leading artists were brought to Tabriz from Herat and other cultural centres during the first two decades of the 16th century and that these artists were successfully experimenting with carpet designs and colour variations. This can be clearly seen in the comparison of this example with the Gulbenkian and Allexander carpets. The present red field has a counterposed design of delicate tendrils linking angular polychrome palmettes in a static design around a sea-green central medallion with superbly proportioned fine scrolling arabesques terminating in polychrome split palmettes. In the Gulbenkian and Alexander examples both the colours and the design motifs in the field and the medallion have be reversed. All three carpets, together with the Berlin example, have identical minor inner guard stripes, although all the main border designs differ. That on the present example, with its well-drawn polychrome linked floral cartouches, is a more colourful and simpler version of the borders of those best known of all medallion carpets, the Ardebil carpets in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Whilst the present carpet shares a variety of features with this group including size, colour, design and motifs, these features are more pronounced in the Calouste Gulbenkian and the Christopher Alexander Collection examples. It appears that, with the estabishment of the first Safavid court, a number of leading artists were brought to Tabriz from Herat and other cultural centres during the first two decades of the 16th century and that these artists were successfully experimenting with carpet designs and colour variations. This can be clearly seen in the comparison of this example with the Gulbenkian and Allexander carpets. The present red field has a counterposed design of delicate tendrils linking angular polychrome palmettes in a static design around a sea-green central medallion with superbly proportioned fine scrolling arabesques terminating in polychrome split palmettes. In the Gulbenkian and Alexander examples both the colours and the design motifs in the field and the medallion have be reversed. All three carpets, together with the Berlin example, have identical minor inner guard stripes, although all the main border designs differ. That on the present example, with its well-drawn polychrome linked floral cartouches, is a more colourful and simpler version of the borders of those best known of all medallion carpets, the Ardebil carpets in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.