Lot 300
  • 300

A large carved wood frieze panel, Almohad or Merinid, Spain or Morocco, 12th-13th Century

Estimate
200,000 - 300,000 GBP
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Description

  • wood
composed of three horizontal sections, one with an additional protruding section, carved throughout in deep relief with a design composed of a colonnade comprising pairs of columns paired by a small horseshoe arch, between each pair of columns an elaborate polylobed arch enclosing a mirrored Kufic design with the perpendiculars rising to form further polylobed arches, knot designs and cusped cartouches enclosing a plump palmette, the spandrels with similar motifs, all on a ground of interlacing half-palmettes, a frieze of stylised floral motifs across the upper edge, traces of colour

Catalogue Note

inscriptions

The repetition and mirroring of al-yumn, 'prosperity'

This panel would have embellished the upper reaches of a wall in a building of some consequence, following in a widespread tradition fully unleashed on Maghiribi architecture from the Almohad period. It is worked with a design of immense complexity with each element carved in a fully expressed form. The fluidity of the interlaces and the perpendiculars of the calligraphy are noteworthy. A panel in the Louvre, thought to be Spanish of the fourteenth century, has a related design but with more angular calligraphy and the architectural nature of the overall design is more pronounced (Paris 1977, p.92, no.129).

On the present panel there is greater balance between the architectural and the calligraphic elements of the design. This is more in keeping with a small panel in the Archaeological Museum in Seville, which also includes a plump palmette with an integral trefoil motif enclosed within the perpendiculars rising from the nun, which is very closely related to those found on the present example (inv.no.R.E.P.3925, illustrated in Seville 2006, p.77). A slightly simplified rendition of this design is used on both the wood and stucco decoration of the Bu 'Inania in Fez, which is a Merinid madrasa dating from the middle of the fourteenth century. Already, by this date, the decoration on this madrasa shows a greater interest in using these elements to produce a rhythmical design rather than an embellished architectural frieze that is still the predominant theme of the present panel. This would tend to argue for a dating prior to c.1350 though the evolution of this style across the Maghrib is not necessarily consistent. Architectural decoration of this design, in myriad variations, was certainly in use as early as the 1270s as witnessed by its appearance in the Cuarto Real de Santo Domingo in Granada (Maldonado 1991, p.184, fig.XXXI, A). Its subsequent use on the madrasa and mosque of Ceuta and the Alhambra shows how it quickly became something of a leitmotif across the region for the architecture of this period (ibid., p.184, fig.XXXI, B-E).

This lot is accompanied by a Radiocarbon Dating Measurement Report confirming a date between the late eleventh and thirteenth centuries.