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

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 2004 by Rosamond E. Mack

(14) Marco Spallanzani and Giovanna Gaeta Bertela, Libro d'inventario dei beni di Lorenzo il Magnifico (Associazione amici del Bargello, Florence, 1992), pp. 8-9, 27-28, 34, 74, 78, 82, 87, 93.

(15) In Florence, for example, the inventory of one Antonio Allegri of 1400 lists a carpet on a writing desk, and the inventory of the Parte Guelfa of 1431 lists a red carpet used on the bench and a green one used on the table when business was conducted (Schiaparelli, La casa fiorentina, vol. 1, p. 224).

(16) In the 1470s, the painter Bartolomeo degli Erri (w. 1450-1479) of Modena twice represented a dragon and phoenix carpet, probably the same one (see Mills, "Early Animal Carpets in Western Paintings: A Review," p. 242 and Fig. 9).

(17) Robert Pinner and Jackie Stanger. "Kufic' Borders on 'Small Holbein' Carpets," Hali, vol. 1 (Winter 1978), pp. 335-336 and Figs. D1, D20.

(18) Walter B. Denny, The Classical Tradition in Anatolian Carpets (Textile Museum, Washington, D. C., in association with Scala, London, 2002), pp. 15, 22 and Fig. 4; and Valentina Roccella, "Large-Pattern Holbein' Carpets in Italian Painting," Oriental Carpet and Textile Studies VI, pp. 68-74.

(19) The vivid word used is frusto, which can also mean "tattered" or "threadbare"; another carpet with "3 wheels" is described as "old coarse" (quoted in David S. Chambers, A Renaissance Cardinal and His Worldly Goods: The Will and Inventory of Francesco Gonzaga [1444-1483] [Warburg Institute, University of London, London, 1992], pp. 153-154).

(20) Richard A. Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1300-1600 (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1993), pp. 204-214, 225-236, 243-252.

(21) Mack, Bazaar to Piazza, pp. 95-147.

(22) Ghirlandaio's altarpiece of 1482-1483 for the church of San Giusto alle Mura, Florence (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence) and other Tuscan paintings show different small-pattern Holbeins (Mills, "Early Animal Carpets in Western Paintings; A Review," p. 328, Nos. 6-9: and Gigetta Dalli Regoli, "La Madonna di Piazza:' ... ce n'e d'assai piu belle, nessuna piu perfetta," in Scritti di storia dell'arte in onore di Federico Zeri [Electa, Milan, 1984], vol. 1, pp. 224, 226 and Fig. 231). Similarly, the ingenious view by Vincenzo Foppa (c. 1430-1515/16) of a Madonna and Child behind a parapet covered with a large-pattern Holbein, within a lunette painted over a door in a Milanese church in 1485, was imitated by Ambrogio da Fossano, called Bergognone (c. 1453-1523), at the Certosa in Pavia about 1488-1489, using a similar carpet. See Maria Grazia Balzarini, Vincenzo Foppa (Jaca Book, Milan, 1997), pp. 60-62 and Fig. 66; and Luca Emilio Brancati, "Figurative Evidence for the Philadelphia Blue-ground SPH: Also an Art-Historical Case Study: Gaudenzio Ferrari and Sperindio Cagnoli," Oriental Carpet and Textile Studies V, part 1, p. 27. Foppa's fresco from Santa Maria di Brera is now in the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.

(23) Brancati, "Figurative Evidence for the Philadelphia Blue-ground SPH," pp. 25-26 and Figs. 4, 13.