Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 22. (Budapest, 2003)

Iván SZÁNTÓ: Reflections on the Origins of the Persian Appliqué from the Esterházy Treasury

sources preserve the multifarious variety of forms, while the written material employs a differentiated terminology.

17 Even so, the absence of surviving items makes the connection and interpretation of these impossible. The evidence that comes to light from the Ottoman documents provides a modest base for both a late dating and a western origin, especially when set against the qmlbäs (i. e., early Safavid) iconography displayed on the appliqué. The Turkish name for appliqué work (naki§duzi, i. e., picture sewing) and the constant references in the Ottoman treatise literature to the Persian style themselves indicate that the technique was adopted from Persia and that it had its precedence there, despite the fact scarcely any Iranian examples of the genre have survived. Not everything has disappeared, however. There are sources attesting to the connection between the Safavid court and the naqsdUzi technique.

18 These sources, along with a few artefacts that employ affixed and embroidered finish, demonstrate the fact that the production of silk appliqué had long been concentrated in the north-western provinces of Persia, principally in Azerbaijan and Gilan. In the inner fields of one of two early nineteenth-century tents made in Gilan(///. 2),

19 full-length portraits exemplify, with special significance, the role played by royal iconography in the Persian appliqué genre, and if there was something in tent making that really was of the Persian style it is depiction itself, a type of display that runs contrary in a decisive way to noniconic aesthetics of the Sunnite orthodoxy, promulgated by the Ottoman Empire. In Ottoman art scope for images was given only by the arts of the book. It was no coincidence that in Ottoman historical painting we find no tent accessories with figurai embellishments: for these we must turn to Persian painting. There the first known example is from an early Timürid version of Rasïd al-Dïn's World Chronicle (III. 3), illustrated around 1420.

20 Sährok b. Tïmur's "historical style" is more detached than the Il-khanid original (1310s) that served as the model for it; the verisimilitude of the environmental elements depicted is less, but the architectural details strive for realism.

21 The illustration in question represents the mythical Persian sïmorg bird (in the form of the Chinese phoenix) guarding the royal tent of the conquering Mongol dynasty; in a finish that is visibly not appliqué, but gold embroidery (tilä-düzl) Although not depicted using the same technique, it is one of the main motifs of the Budapest appliqué. In later depictions of tentage we happen upon nothing more than sîmorgs hunting, but through the two Gilan tents we have reason to postulate that compositions on tents were direct derivatives of actual court painting not only in the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, but in the intervening period also. If this is true, then the Esterházy appliqué was contemporaneous with the finest early Safavid paintings, and was made in the first half of the sixteenth century. In the absence of materials from the history of textiles, then, it is primarily iconographie arguments that give the lead. On the basis of these Phyllis Ackerman, Rasim Efendiev and Károly Gombos made much more progress

22 than Végh, Csányi and Katona, all three of whom approached the work from the standpoint of the craftsmanship. Certainly the depiction assists in precise dating, which at most can be finely adjusted by the standpoint of technique. It is true that, for example, single-niche prayer rugs which, morphologically, are related to the Budapest appliqué - became popular only around 1600,

23 but it was at this time that proliferation in all textile genres began, brought about by market demand. That the Budapest work is earlier is proved by the analogies from painting, and not by tent making. Independently of one another, it is to the 1530s and 1540s that all three examples below direct us. //. Periodisation based on the iconographie evidence II. 1. The musing prince and the Mohammad! theory Phyllis Ackerman formed her opinion on the work with incomparably greater professional insight than the pre1939 Hungarian authors but relying on limited physical access and