ITALY, 17TH CENTURY

These rich velvet panels are clearly derived from the tradition of Ottoman velvets which thrived from the mid-15th to 17th centuries. Like its Ottoman counterparts, the panels are woven with a crimson-red ground and brocaded with metal-thread forming a lattice around ogival medallions. However, the unusual use of the elegant ice-blue in the ogival lozenges situates them with the tradition of European velvets.
Ottoman velvets were commonly used in furnishings, from cushions to wall hangings, in the Ottoman Empire, but were exported to Europe where they were rather favoured for elaborate costumes. By the late 15th and 16th centuries, Italian velvet production had flourished and Italian velvets were of such quality that they were in direct competition with their Ottoman counterparts. The importance of these textiles is shown by the number that survive in the Topkapi Palace Museum, greatly outnumbering Turkish velvets, some of which were even used in imperial kaftans (Nurhan Atasoy, Julia Raby, and Louise Mackie et al., IPEK. The Crescent and the Rose. Imperial Ottoman Silk and Velvets, London, 2001, pp. 171–72, 182–90, fig.36). Two further panels of the same velvet as the present lot are housed in the Calouste Gulbekian Collection.