Vadas József (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 10. (Budapest, 1991)
BATÁRI Ferenc: Az Iparművészeti Múzeum három oszmán-török „Memling-szőnyeg"-e
Livre du euer d'amour esperis, presently in the possession of Vienna's Nationalbibliothek, and also in Hans Memling's (c. 1430-1494) paintings (Plate 5)-for example, The Virgin and Child Enthroned, Accompanied by an Angel Playing Music and the Donor (c. 1470), owned by Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum 1 , and Still Life in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Castagnola (Lugano) Switzerland (Plate 6). The designation "Memling carpet", denoting carpets embellished with a series of step-wise rhomboids with hooks, derives from the pictures of Hans Memling. Infinitely repeated patterns, similar to the one seen in the composition of the Memling carpets, comprise the archaic section of Oriental carpet ornamentation. The art of carpet weaving, in which this archaic and infinitely repeated ornamentation could flourish, owed its origin to the nomadic way of life, and generally survived among the Turkmens of Central Asia right until the twentieth century. The classic, nomadic art of carpet weaving, continuously practised by Turkmens in its original form almost until today, was conserved. Therefore, the study of Turkmen carpets might be helpful in discovering the origin and the interpretation of the motifs of the Memling carpets. In Central Asia, the huge Turkmen "great carpet", the hali, was exclusively decorated with rows of tribal insignia, göh, i.e., "kalkans", in the form of medallions. Their composition was identical to that of the first two of our Memling carpets. Having surrendered its sovereignty, a tribe also lost the right to use its original tribal insignia, which henceforth were left off the hali (the symbol of the family home) and turned up, as simple ornamental motifs, on less valuable objects such as the bags (choval, torba, etc.) used to store common utensils. The importance of these insignia, as well as their original meaning, would eventually be lost with the passage of the years. The three carpets introduced in the present study were made by Ottoman Turks, who had also belonged to the tribal alliances of Central Asia before coming to Anatolia, and, therefore, it is not unreasonable to assume that in the fifteenth century the Central Asian tradition was still alive among them and was only superseded later, with the decay of the nomadic way of life. An infinitely repeated pattern, related to the one used by the Turkmens of Central Asia, generally characterizes the earliest Anatolian carpets, was, after the beginning of the sixteenth century, gradually replaced by the concentric composition, owing to Persian and Arabian influence. The design of the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Turkish carpets, as recorded by (in most cases European) painters of the same period, generally comprises heraldic figures of animals. Since most of the Turkic tribal insignia were animal representations, it is very probable that the animals shown on the carpets in European paintings are heraldic figures. The Turkmen carpets of Central Asia with göh are closely related to the Holbein carpets of Anatolia, which are embellished with rows of medallions having a braided trim and a star in the middle. Most probably, the Holbein medallion was also a tribal symbol, i.e. a göl. However, the originally intended heraldic function oígöh was soon forgotten in Anatolia : the origin of several, typically local, archaic and infinitely repeated motifs-such as the L. Lotto pattern, the chintamani pattern or the "bird" patternare difficult to trace back to any particular tribal insignia. The arabesque pattern of the Lotto carpets was developed from the secondary motif of the Holbein pattern, the chintamani motif was borrowed from Far Eastern textiles, while the "bird" motif was a local variant of the chintamani pattern. 2 The provenance of two of our three Memling carpets is also worthy of interest. The Museum purchased the fifteenth-century carpet in 1917, from the noted Transylvanian art collector Emil Sigerus, and bought the eighteenth-century exhibit in 1953, from
