Oriental carpets in Italian Renaissance paintings: art objects and status symbols

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 2004 by Rosamond E. Mack

New Italian attitudes toward domestic furnishings must have been foremost among the factors that propelled the oriental carpet into a display object and status symbol. Account books and inventories show a sharp rise in spending on luxurious domestic furnishings during the third quarter of the fifteenth century, and the variety of objects and the number of families acquiring them increased steadily through the sixteenth. (20) Inventories and paintings show that it became fashionable to display fine art and luxury goods, both locally produced and imported, in the marital bedchamber and the gentleman's study. The soaring demand for luxurious display objects spurred rapid advances in Italian ceramics, glass, leather, and metalwork during the decades following 1460. (21) The coincidence between these Italian developments and the expanded production of high-quality carpets in Anatolia undoubtedly contributed more to the carpets' success than their particular designs.

Contemporary Italian painting style, in which representational accuracy and innovative imagery were highly valued, fostered the prominent depiction of oriental carpets. The representation of carpets enabled artists to showcase their descriptive skills, and inventive depictions quickly became influential. For example, Credi may not have completed his amazing stair carpet (see Pl. XI) when Ghirlandaio imitated its placement (see Pl. X). The stair carpet depicted by Ghirlandaio as well as those in an earlier altarpiece of 1482-1483 and those of later Tuscan painters using the same imagery are each unique objects, however. (22)

Through the majority of Italian representations have been verified by surviving carpets or show credible variations, accuracy cannot be assumed. A few painters regularly exercised artistic license. For example, Vittore Carpaccio (c. 1460-c. 1562), a master at blending fact and fantasy in his foreign settings and costumes, evoked various carpet types, but his designs are unreliable. Sperindio Cagnola (or Cagnoli; w. 1505-1521), a lesser artist, apparently misunderstood fine details and how they fit together. (23) More problematic are peculiarities in depictions by artists proven accurate in other works, such as those by Piero della Francesca. (24) It is possible that some suspect representations show European copies of Islamic carpets.

Specific documentation of the ownership of the depicted carpets is lacking. The Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala, a well-endowed hostel and infirmary in Siena, may well have owned the large carpet represented in the portion of the fresco shown in Plate IV, which depicts a wedding on the premises. The carpets in formal portraits presumably belonged to the sitters, as did other distinctive accessories, such as the family headdress worn by the wife in the painting in Plate VII. The only painter known to have owned a fine Turkish carpet. Lotto, may have represented it in one of his altarpieces showing carpets. (25) The large-pattern Holbein and the prayer rug repeatedly represented by Jacopo Bassano (c. 1510-1592) must have been in his studio. (26) But ownership is not a given, for carpets could be rented in Venice and studied in the markets and streets of Italian cities and towns. (27)