Bellini carpet

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Left: Prayer rug, Anatolia, late 15th - early 16th century, with a “keyhole” motif. Right: Gentile Bellini: Madonna and Child Enthroned; late 15th century Left: Prayer rug, Anatolia, late 15th - early 16th century, with a “keyhole” motif. Right: Gentile Bellini: Madonna and Child Enthroned; late 15th century
Left : Prayer rug, Anatolia, late 15th - early 16th century, with a “keyhole” motif.
Right : Gentile Bellini: Madonna and Child Enthroned ; late 15th century
Daniel Mytens: Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham , ca.1620.

In the history of art, the Bellini carpet is an ancient, mostly Anatolian knotted carpet that has a dominant pattern called a “keyhole” or “re-entry”. This arises from an octagonal fold of the inner narrow side border towards the field, the shape of which looks like an ancient keyhole . At the top of the carpet, the border converges diagonally to form a point or niche from which an ornament similar to a lamp often hangs down. This gives the carpet the pattern of a prayer rug , but mirror-image “keyhole” motifs are also known.

Only a few originals have survived. They were discovered in paintings from the Renaissance period in the 19th century . They were named after the Renaissance painter Gentile Bellini (1429–1507), in whose painting Madonna and Child Enthroned, such a carpet can be seen at the feet of the Madonna.

term

“Bellini” carpets can also be found on paintings by other Renaissance painters, such as Lorenzo Lotto , Francesco da Ponte , Pietro de Saliba or Daniel Mytens . Mills (1991) lists a total of 19 paintings on which a “Bellini” carpet can be recognized.

The term comes from comparative Islamic art studies. At the beginning of research into Islamic carpet art in the late 19th century, only a few original oriental carpets were known. It was therefore necessary to rely on depictions of carpets in European paintings, the date of which is known. The classification is essentially based on the dominant motifs of the field and differentiates according to type, size and arrangement of the patterns and motifs. The assignment to European painters sometimes seems arbitrary, since on the one hand different artists have depicted the same type of carpet, on the other hand patterns are even assigned to painters who have actually never painted them. The terms remained in use as more detailed information became available.

Interpretation of the pattern

The pattern of the "Bellini" carpets was and is of great importance in the design of Islamic prayer carpets. This seems to have been known to European dealers and buyers, because in English at the time, carpets with this pattern were called “musket carpets”, a corruption of the word “mosque”. In Gentile Bellini's “ Enthroned Madonna with Child ” the carpet is motifically correct, namely just like a Muslim would use a prayer carpet: facing the prayer niche that the qibla indicates. In Bellini's picture, the carpet faces the apse in which the Madonna is enthroned. This does not apply to Lorenzo Lotto's husband and wife from 1523. Here the couple turns to the "foot end" of the carpet. It is not known whether Bellini saw and understood how prayer rugs are used in Istanbul.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b John Mills: The 'Bellini', 'keyhole', or 're-entrant' rugs . In: Hali . tape 58 , 1991, pp. 89-103 .
  2. ↑ Kurt Erdmann: Seven Hundred Years of Oriental Carpet . Bussesche Verlagshandlung, Herford 1966, p. 227-232 .
  3. ^ A b Donald King, David Sylvester : The Eastern Carpet in the Western World. From the 15th to the 17th century . Arts Council of Great Britain, London 1983, ISBN 0-7287-0362-9 , pp. 14-16, 56, 58 .