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3. SWIRLING FLOWER-HEADS Turkey (Iznik) circa 1570 Height: 24.5 cm Width: 24.5 cm |
A square polychrome underglaze-painted tile in bright cobalt blue, sealing wax red or Armenian bole, and apple green on a crisp white ground with an elegant design of swirling flower-heads on leafy sprigs that turn in clockwise direction within a cusped red-bordered medallion. The spandrels each contain a trefoil palmette flanked by an arabesque of composite flowers against a green ground. This beautiful tile shows the Iznik potters at the peak of their technical skills, firing the finest tomato-hued sealing wax red offset by a brilliant apple or emerald green. These complementary colours are combined with the more traditional cobalt blue and fired to dazzling effect against a pure white ground. A tile with an almost identical pattern is recorded in the Barlow Collection. This is illustrated in Geza Fehérvári, Islamic Pottery: A Comprehensive Study based on the Barlow Collection, 1973, pp. 153-154, no. 205, pl. 90a. This tile has the same twelve-lobed medallion enclosing a central flower surrounded by six other flowers. Surrounding the medallion are scrolls and palmettes on a green ground. The colour palette does not include red and Fehérvári dates the tile to circa 1535-1555. The design of the Barlow tile may be seen as a prototype of the present tile, where a favourite pattern developed at an earlier date is revived but greatly enriched by the addition of a lustrous red. A group of tiles with related red medallions enclosing kaleidoscopic split-leaf palmettes on a white ground can be seen in the Rüstem Pasha Mosque of 1561 in Istanbul. These tiles are illustrated in Walter Denny, Iznik: The Artistry of Ottoman Ceramics, 2004, pp. 28-29. The Rüstem Pasha Mosque, built by the celebrated architect Sinan for the immensely wealthy vizier of Sultan Suleyman the magnificent, is the first Ottoman building to utilize tiles in the newly developed polychrome technique, with the colour red finally reaching maturity. The perfection of the polychrome palette on the present tile suggests a date of manufacture between 1560 and 1575. |