'Lotto' arabesque rug, Central Anatolia, first half 16th century. Warp: undyed white wool, Z2S, alternate warps slightly depressed. Weft: dyed red wool, Z1, 2 shoots. Pile: wool, Z2S, dyed yellow, red, light blue, dark blue, blue green, mildly corrosive dark-brown and undyed white. Knot: SY, slightly pulled to the left, 40V x 36H/dm = 1,440/dm2 (93/in2). Sides: not original, ends less than 1 cm red and blue-green tapestry weave. 1.14 x 2.02 m (3' 9" x 6' 7½"). Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of James F. Ballard, 101:1929
This dynamic Anatolian ‘Lotto’ rug was a gift from James F. Ballard to the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM). Here we look at the characteristics of the type.
So-called ‘Lotto’ rugs were made in considerable numbers in Anatolia between the late 15th and 18th centuries, in both small and much larger formats. They are named after a specific Renaissance painting by the Italian artist Lorenzo Lotto — The Charity of Saint Anthony, an altarpiece of 1542 in the church of San Giovanni e Paolo in Venice. However, although ‘Lotto’ rugs do not appear in Renaissance paintings until the first half of the 16th century, the characteristic infinite repeat split-leaf arabesque pattern arises from the international Islamic style of the second half of the 15th, and a few of these rugs may predate 1500.
In The Carpet and the Connoisseur, the catalogue of the 2016 Ballard collection exhibition in Saint Louis, Walter Denny describes the general design as a ‘geometric pattern of stylized split leaves and blossoms in yellow on a red ground; the conceptual basis... comprises two different elements, one cruciform and the other more four-square, arranged vertically in staggered horizontal rows.’ He also points out that the ‘adaptation of a curvilinear prototype to the carpet medium produced a strongly geometric form.’
