ITALIAN & OTTOMAN VELVETS

6. left: Ottoman çintamani velvet, Turkey,Bursa (?), late 16th or early 17th century. Silk, cotton and metalwrapped thread, 0.62 x 1.12m (2’0" x 3'8"). Formerly Kelekian Collection (Gaston Migeon, ‘Etoffes et Tapis d’Orient et de Venise’, La Collection Kelekian, Paris, 1908, pl.89, left). Private collection

7. Right: Ottoman çintamanivelvet, Turkey, late 16th or early 17th century. Silk and cotton, 0.35 x 1.00m (1'2" x 3'3"). Private collection

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pomegranate with, at its centre, a tulip-like motif with scales on each of its three sections. This is startlingly similar to the classic elongated Ottoman tulip (tulipa acumenata), which appears on so many types of artefact, and develops into the buxom, onion-shaped flowers encountered on Ottoman embroideries. These usually have the same three petals, but the scales have become chevrons or even straight bands of contrasting colour. The lower row has a central artichoke which also appears on a 16th century Italian velvet (3) with offset rows of lobed medallions resembling the Tudor rose set on a white ground filled with elegantly scrolling foliage, its emphasis coming from a sparing use of claret-red outlines and details. One should remember that Italian textiles were in great demand at the Ottoman court, and that all but two of the surviving royal kaftans in Topkapı Saray are made from Italian velvet. As if to differentiate themselves from the Italian specimens, the Turkish velvets in this collection all incorporate the çintamanidevice, which was to become virtually the logo of the Ottoman royal line. The only onewith the more usual grouping of three balls with pairs of the undulating ‘tiger’ stripes is the earliest, a 15th century fragment from the Bernheimer Collection (4). Several examples are known but most are small, except for one sizeable piece sold by Lefevre (17 July 1981, lot 1) and one exampleat the Musées Royaux, Brussels. Some have only solid discs, others have trios of small circles with single central spots alternating with threesomes of bigger roundels with three dots, like large buttons. This piece has the button-balls, like the Lefevre lot and others in the Textile Museum, Washington, and Brussels. Another rare type has huge çintamani, each with smaller balls within balls at the base, and floral sprays in the field, and a particularly beautiful burgundy-red pile (6). A complete, almost identical panel (HALI 36, Gallery p.XI), was later included in an exhibition of textiles from private Turkish sources in Istanbul (HALI 98, p.98, fig.2). This has the same design as another fragment in the Gulbenkian Collection, Lisbon. Perhaps most stylish velvet of all is a fragment from a large bordered panel, with monumental, unadorned, single çintamani, each with a smaller ball with a serrated edge (7).Its power lies in its understatement. There do not seem to be any matching examples, but a closely related panel in the Mevlâna Museum, Konya, has a comparable visual impact (see Nurhan Atasoy et.al., Ipek, the Crescent and the Rose, pl.97). Hanging between these two majestic velvets is a yastık with an apparently unique variation on the çintamani theme (5). Large roundels with concentric inner circles float in staggered formation among pale çintamani linked by strapwork. The roses on the lappet ends display an opened form of the rosebud often found in Ottoman art, which so closely resembles the nascent blooms in the paintings of Fra Filippino Lippi (ca. 1406-1469) and Sandro Botticelli (ca. 1446-1510). Examining these velvets, one realises how much more traffic of design ideas there was from Italian to Ottoman art than is at first apparent. The scale of the commercial and cultural interchange between the two regions is evidence of just how much people moved around in those days, long before the advent of motorised travel.

ITALIAN & OTTOMAN VELVETS

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