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Sotheby's Fine Carpets
London | 05 Apr 2006| Sale L06870
LOT 57
VARIOUS PROPERTIES
AN OUSHAK 'LOTTO' CARPET FRAGMENT, WEST ANATOLIA,
composed of a left hand side main border, the breadth of the main field in
areas and some
areas of ajacent inner right hand guard border, missing
both end borders
approximately 193 by 168cm., 6ft. 4in. by 5ft. 6in.
early 16th century
ESTIMATE 8,000-12,000 GBP
CATALOGUE
NOTE
The ‘Lotto’ group of carpets, so-called for their depiction in a
number of paintings by western artists of the 16th and 17
th centuries,
in particular Lorenzo Lotto, have field designs of three types, classified
by Charles Grant Ellis as
‘Anatolian’, ‘Ornamented’ and ‘Kilim’, see
Ellis, C.G., ‘The Lotto Pattern as a Fashion in Carpets’, Festschrift für
Peter
Wilhelm Meister, Hamburg, 1975. The present example has an
‘Anatolian’ field pattern within an open kufesque
border; a similar
border and field is seen in the earliest ‘Lotto’ rug depicted, in the work
by Sebastian del Piombo of
1516, ‘Cardinal Bandinello Sauli, his
Secretary and two Geographers’, in the National Gallery of Art, Washington,
and
again in another early depiction, ‘Annunciation’, circa 1520, by the
Master of the retable of Santos-o-Novo, in the
Museu Nacional de Arte
Antiga, Lisbon. It is generally accepted that ‘Lotto’ rugs with this
combination of field and
border design are the earliest of the group as a
whole. The minor inner border is similar to that of the example in the
Wher Collection, illustrated on p. 282 in Mills, J., ‘Lotto’ Carpets in
Western Paintings, Hali Vol. 3, No. 4, pp.278-288.
The ground colour of
the border is usually green and the use of a light tan as seen in the
present lot is unusual, as is
the deep liver red of the field, which
lends this example a particularly archaic feel. For a more extensive
discussion of
this group, please see Sotheby’s New York, 14th December
2001, lot 48.
image source: www.rugtracker.com,
John Taylor
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