A complete ‘Lotto’ Arabesque rug
c. 1500-1525
Western Anatolia
Wool (warp, weft, and pile); with symmetrically knotted pile
199 x 121 cm
The distinctive, angular yellow lattice that meanders and scrolls over the rich red ground of this rug instantly identifies it as a ‘Lotto’, so-called because the same class of rug appears in two works by the Venetian painterLorenzo Lotto (1480–1556): The Alms of St Antoninus in the Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice (1542; fig. 1) and the Portrait of Giovanni della Volta and his Wife and Children in the National Gallery, London (1547; inv. NG1047).
