PROBABLY USHAK, WEST ANATOLIA, CIRCA 1520

This rare rug, which to the best of our knowledge is unpublished, is amongst the earliest examples of the so-called 'Lotto' group of 'Anatolian' field design with an 'Open-Kufic' border. Named after Lorenzo Lotto, one of the leading Venetian-trained painters of the earlier 16th century, surprisingly, this particular pattern appears in just two recorded paintings by the artist. The first, painted in 1542 is The Alms of Saint Antoninus of Florence which is situated in the Basilica of Saints Giovanni and Paolo, Venice. The second, slightly later painting, Portrait of Giovanni della Volta with his Wife and Children, 1547 is in the National Gallery, London. In fact the popularity of this particular group of carpets in Europe proved so great that the pattern appears in more than 250 paintings by European artists from the 1520's until the early eighteenth century, ('Portraits of Great Carpets', Michael Franses, HALI, Issue 198, pp.94-97). It was perhaps the use of deeply saturated colour, bold use of shadow and the ability to accurately capture the textural surfaces of these weavings that made Lotto's name synonymous with this pattern. For a thorough discussion of the history of early Turkish carpets see Michael Franses and Robert Pinner, "Turkish Carpets in the Victoria and Albert Museum: The 'Classical' Carpets of the 15th to 17th Centuries," HALI, Vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 357-381

Within the group, the field designs were divided, almost half a century ago, into three different styles; 'Anatolian', 'kilim' and 'ornamented' by Charles Grant Ellis ('The 'Lotto' Pattern as a Fashion in Carpets', Festschrift für Peter Wilhelm Meister, 1975, pp.19-31), a division of styles which has been used almost universally since, even if the conclusions drawn by the author have not been fully accepted. The latter two styles are widely agreed to be the earliest and which have the least surviving examples. The field of the present carpet falls into the 'Anatolian' style, typified by the serrated edges of the motifs, a style which Ellis (op.cit. p.20) refers to as both 'spiky' and 'delicate'.

The border design of the present rug is commonly referred to as the 'open kufic' border. This appears as a faux-calligraphic interlaced band in white on a green ground, in which the vertical ligatures of the Arabic letter-like forms end in finials that point away from the field. Among the early depictions this general border type is certainly the most frequently occurring and coincidentally is the same border pattern that appears on the two paintings by Lorenzo Lotto mentioned earlier. The green ground colour is frequently associated with the 'kufic' borders ('Five 'Lotto' Rugs in the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris', Pamela Benoussan, HALI, Vol 3, No 4, pp.276-7). Unlike some of the other early designs, such as the 'ragged palmette' design, the 'open kufic' border went out of popularity; its latest appearance, with one exception which is dubious in any case, being in the late sixteenth century.

The few remaining documented small format examples known today, of which this is not one, are listed by John Eskenazi, Il tappeto orientale dal XV al XVIII secolo, London, 1981, p. 54, footnote 12, which includes examples in; the Musée des Art Decoratifs, Paris, Inv. No 10555, the oldest of five 'Lotto' rugs in the collection; the Saint Louis Art Museum, Inv. No 104:1929, gifted by James F. Ballard in 1929; the Dikran G. Kelekian rug sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1908, Acc. No 08.167.1; the John D. Mcllhenny 'Lotto' in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Acc. No: 1943-40-68; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, purchased in 1897 by Arthur Skinner, the assistant curator, in Florence, inv. no.904-1897; an example in the Zaleski collection, Italy, more recently exhibited in 'Lorenzo Lotto Portraits', 2018-19 National Gallery London; the Lutomirsky 'Lotto', formerly with Count Lutomirsky which passed to the Wher Collection and is now with Moshe Tabibnia, Milan; and an example in the Tabibnia Collection, Milan, exhibited in 'Il Montefeltro e l'Oriente Islamico', Urbino, 2018.