ITALIAN & OTTOMAN VELVETS

The Point of Red PENNY OAKLEY

The most sumptuous of textiles, velvet became a symbol of wealth and prestige, adorning both European Rennaisance and Ottoman Turkish courts. We explore an extraordinary private collection of red velvets from Italy and the Ottoman Empire that lend colour to their owner’s family history.

“ T

he spider spins his web in the palace of the Caesars”, quoted Mehmed II, the Conqueror, as he wandered sadly through the shattered precincts of his proudest conquest, Constantinople, once the brightest jewel in the Byzantine diadem, but now a crumbling ruin. Determined as he was to rebuild the commercial and political dominance of the city which he renamed Istanbul (‘to the city’), could this ambitious young Ottoman Sultan ever have dreamt of the cultural and artistic heights to be achieved by his descendants? His new capital was to become the hub of one of history’s greatest empires. As part of a conscious policy of political propaganda, his successors developed a definitive artistic identity by which the House of Osman was to be recognised. Among the products of this imperial art form were the sumptuous textiles created for the courts of successive sultans – lustrous silks, iridescent velvets, and the fine embroideries that echoed

their designs. But the Ottomans were not alone in this search for courtly splendour. The Renaissance, which many like to date from the fall of Constantinople, in 1453, was a glittering and colourful age, when kings and princes competed over the magnificence of their courts. At the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France each spent exorbitant sums to outdo each other in outrageous opulence. Our collector is a child of the Mediterranean, the world that created these luxury textiles, with roots in the Spain of the Inquisition, where non-Christians were made less than welcome. Leaving during the final expulsions in the 17th century, they eventually found safe haven in Istanbul where, needing fresh talent to revive the economic lifeblood of the metropolis, Mehmed II offered a society more tolerant of foreigners and their ways. The Venetians and Genoese had left Constantinople as its trade

1. Left: One of a pair of Italian ferronerie velvet panels (detail), Venice (?), 15th century. Silk, each 0.58 x 1.28m (1'11" x 4'2"). Private collection

2. Below: Italian velvet, late 15th or early 16th century. Pile on pile silk velvet, gold thread and gold bouclé, 0.91 x 1.68m (3'0 x 5'8"). Formerly Sangiorgi Collection (Donald King, Textiles from the Sangiorgi Collection, 1985, no.12). Private collection

All photos Longevity

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