A gold disc with enamelled decoration, Balkans, 15th-16th century

of flattened circular form with applied gold elements with cloisonné enamelling in pale blue and green to form a design of interlacing split palmettes mounted with flower form pins, around a central stylized foliate motif, a border of raised loops and dots

Collection de Martine, Comtesse de Béhague, provenant de la succession du Marquis de Ganay, Sotheby's, Monaco, 1987, lot 197

The design employs a spare decorative vocabulary of split palmettes. The simplicity tends to argue for a dating before 1500 and the introduction in the sixteenth of hatayi, or naturalistic floral elements into Ottoman art. The split palmettes are formed into irregular shapes repeated and overlapped to form alternately cartouches of palmette shape and trilobed panels. This device of overlapping asymmetrical shapes formed of split palmettes is certainly present in Ottoman enamelling in this period as is shown by the central roundel in a dish thought to date from circa 1500, sold through these rooms, 11th October 1996, lot 42. Another dish with an enamelled central roundel is decorated in similar tones of pale blue and green (Petsopoulos 1982, p.22, fig.5). The colours have lost some of their strength in a manner similar to that on the present object. Another enamelled disc, employing a related decorative device, is mounted on the back of a silver-gilt rhipidion made in Serbia and dated 1559-60, though this has included some elements of hatayi in its border (Byzantium. Faith and Power (1261-1557), New York, 2004, pp.133-4, no.70).