AN IZNIK TILE PANEL

OTTOMAN TURKEY, CIRCA 1580

Details

AN IZNIK TILE PANEL
OTTOMAN TURKEY, CIRCA 1580
Comprising six square tiles, the white ground decorated in bole-red, cobalt-blue, green and black with a repeating design of palmettes containing floral sprays of saz leaves, carnations and flowerheads reserved against cobalt-blue ground, the palmettes issuing small cusped pendants and surrounded by dense swaying prunus blossom and occasional carnations, in plain wood frame with later gold inscription reading Iznik tiles c.1560 under Süleyman's patronage, mis-mounted
Panel 27 5/8 x 18¾in. (70.2 x 47.4cm.)

Provenance

Anonymous sale, Sotheby's, London, 25 April 1990, lot 432

Brought to you by

Arne Everwijn

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Lot Essay

These tiles are of particular note because of the survival of the olive-brown colour used in the stems, which recalls the 'Damascus' style of the mid 16th century. A near identical tile panel, but formed of sixteen square tiles and with a palmette border, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York gifted to them by J. Pierpoint Morgan in 1917 (Yanni Petsopoulos (ed.), Tulips, Arabesques and Turbans. Decorative Arts from the Ottoman Empire, London, 1982, no.128, p.134). Tiles with similar repeating patterns incorporating floral escutcheons decorate the Takyeci Ibrahim Aga Mosque in Istanbul, built in 1592, and the design continued to be popular in the early seventeenth century.

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