The Lotto Arabesque - An Elusive Design

1 - Lotto rug, Sebastiano del Piombo, 1516

2 - Lotto rug, early 16th

The prolific Ushak weaving district, Western Anatolia, most likely was the birthplace of a unique type of arabesque rug called after the name of an Italian painter who depicted them in at least two paintings in the mid 16th century - Lorenzo Lotto. Actually a such patterned rug appears earlier in a portrait by Sebastiano del Piombo, 1516. Arabesque rugs are non really common in the Turkish output (see here 'Silks, Tiles and Rugs') - this one really one of a kind and so well conceived as to get a long career both in its own home and abroad.

More than one diagram can be sketched on the pattern (one of them in plate 3), which unveils its underlaying geometric modular system. Four units are pointed out - A and B are based on a circle or octagon, C and D  on a cross or diamond -  These are connected to each other by a shared element in a selfgenerating process typical of the 14th and 15th century arabesque style. The design continuity together with the floral layout really sets this group of rugs apart.

A kinship with the Small Pattern Holbein rugs is often  claimed, despite they share neither continuity of design (the two units are indipendent) nor a floral look (the units are composed by stars and knots). While the SP Holbein design has indeed an 'archaic' look, the Lotto one seems to belong to a rising Ottoman style in a period - the late 15th century - of great experimentation and crossbreed. The Timurid style was undoubtedly one of the main influences

3 - Lotto rug, design units, 16th

4- Small Pattern Holbein rug, 16th

5 - Timurid Carpets, diagrams, Amy Briggs

Similar patterns were plausibly used in other fabrics, though extant examples seem to be rare and their provenance hardly proved. One such item is a late Timurid period silk lampas depicting an allover design - two units of interlaced palmette&rosette within split leaves.

6 - Timurid silk lampas, Iran or Turkey, late 15th

This type of device was gracing also the central medallion of some coeval Ushak rugs, as well as many ceramic works since an early date.

7 - Large Medallion Ushak, early 16th

8 - Iznik bowl, 1480

Looking for design sources, tile revetments are often to be investigated.

Geometric modular systems with interlacing motifs were used to cover the masonries of early 15th century palatial buildings, as the Green Mosque in Bursa (1420s)

9 - Green Mosque, Bursa, 1420s

Unfortunately many structures of the second half of the 15th century have only partly survived and their images are of a very bad quality. Often covered by later architecture and  not yet unveiled by archeologists, the extant pieces testify, among others, the resilience of the floral arabesque patterned on geometric modular systems.

In the same period interlacing rumi arabesques with split leaves, palmettes and buds gave birth to a different type of rug design - no interlocked units, no selfgenerating design, just a repeat one .

10 - Turkish rug, simple modular system, 16th

11 - Lotto interlocked units, 16th

Two tile panels dated to the 1520s depict similar interlocked designs. The dating is plausibly slightly later than the Lotto pattern.  Interestingly enough, plate14 suggests quite properly how the Lotto arabesque could have looked like in a curvilinear style.

12 - Top Kapi, Audience Room, 1527

13 - Coban Mustafa Pasha Mosque, Gebze, late 1520s

14 - Top Kapi, Circumcision Room, unit C type, 1529

15 - Lotto, unit C

A later design in the Rustem Pasha Mosque (plate 16) shows two interlocking units based on palmette and split leaf in a cross arrangement (unit C), in particular it shares the same 'flat leaf' as the Lotto's one. Although the tile revetment of this building is one of the main epiphany of the new born Ottoman style as wanted and planned by the court, nonetheless elements of the previous influences can be detached.

16 - Rustem Pasha Mosque, Sinan, early 1560s

17 - Lotto 'flat leaf'

In the Lotto pattern the continuity of the design, the variety of the units, their ambivalence (cross, circle, octagon, diamond) and the neat two colours choice give to each of them an even dignity, the eye deceived in search for a dominant focus. Yet the many focuses create the specific fascination of the design, misleading the fixed nature of the allover pattern. The weavers must have been conscious of it. At times, in fact, they drifted from the plan enhancing it by colours and by focusing one or two units, always proving the long lasting vitality of the invention - stiffness lurking around the corner when the real nature of the design was not any more understood.

18 - Black Church, second half 16th, Brasov

20 - Berlin Museum, 17th

19 - A. Boralevi, 16th-17th

21 - Small format Lotto, 17th

The simple two colours choice for the field (yellow&red) - not quite popular among Turkish rugs - may have been sourced from the period gold&purple velvets with gold thread brocaded designs. In addition gilded tiles were a typical usage in the early Ottoman tile revetments enlivening the usual white&blue scheme.

22 - Ottoman silk velvet with gold threads, 16th

23 - Green Mosque, Bursa, 1420s

24 - Top Kapi, Audience Room, 1520s

A few pieces display an even richer colour range, not necessarily related to a later phase - the purple velvet look definetely vanished in favour of a visual effect more common in a knotted carpet.

25 - A. Boralevi, Western Anatolia, 16th 

26 - Ex Halevim,  Western Anatolia, 16th

27 - Mac Mullan Collection, Western Anatolia, circa 1700 

28 - Vakiflar, Eastern Anatolia,  18th (?)

29 - Purple velvet look,  Castello Sforzesco.

Finally, the unique Lotto arabesque is probably indebted to the effervescent atmosphere of the court entourage, and to the experimentations of a rising art still looking at foreign models and training for its definitive assessment. No wonder if a proof of its court source will surface in the future.

Foreign artists were working together at the royal workshops or were invited to work independently for the court. Not strange if the urban laboratories felt as well free to assemble inputs from different media, as the case of our elusive pattern.

The Lotto arabesque - a tile design disguised as a gold&purple silk velvet by means of the knotted technique?

                                                       



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Image credits
Alberto Boralevi;  Christies Sales; Moshe Tabibnia Gallery; The Bardini Legacy; The David Collection; The Mc Mullan Collection; The Museum of Islamic Art, Berlin; The Museum of Art, Cincinnati, www.rugtracker.com: The Holbein-Lotto Family.




Bibliographic references
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Mc Mullan Collection, Metropolitan Bulletin, 1970
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Schmutzler, E., Altorientalischer Teppiche in Siebenbürgen, Leipzig, 1933
Turkish Carpets from the 15th to the 18th Centuries, exhibition catalogue, Istanbul, 1996
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