An Oushak 'Lotto' carpet fragment, West Anatolia,

The ‘Lotto’ group of carpets, so-called for their depiction in a number of paintings by western artists of the 16^th and 17^th centuries, in particular Lorenzo Lotto, have field designs of three types, classified by Charles Grant Ellis as ‘Anatolian’, ‘Ornamented’ and ‘Kilim’, see Ellis, C.G., ‘The Lotto Pattern as a Fashion in Carpets’, Festschrift für Peter Wilhelm Meister, Hamburg, 1975. The present example has an ‘Anatolian’ field pattern within an open kufesque border; a similar border and field is seen in the earliest ‘Lotto’ rug depicted, in the work by Sebastian del Piombo of 1516, ‘Cardinal Bandinello Sauli, his Secretary and two Geographers’, in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and again in another early depiction, ‘Annunciation’, circa 1520, by the Master of the retable of Santos-o-Novo, in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.  It is generally accepted that ‘Lotto’ rugs with this combination of field and border design are the earliest of the group as a whole. The minor inner border is similar to that of the example in the Wher Collection, illustrated on p. 282 in Mills, J., ‘Lotto’ Carpets in Western Paintings, Hali Vol. 3, No. 4, pp.278-288. The ground colour of the border is usually green and the use of a light tan as seen in the present lot is unusual, as is the deep liver red of the field, which lends this example a particularly archaic feel.  For a more extensive discussion of this group, please see Sotheby’s New York, 14^th December 2001, lot 48.