page_title: Oriental carpets in Renaissance painting
section_title: Perception of Oriental carpets during the Renaissance
hierarchical_section_title: Oriental carpets in Renaissance painting / Perception of Oriental carpets during the Renaissance
caption_attribution_description: English: Pseudo_Kufic_examples
context_page_description: Carpets of Middle-Eastern origin, either from Anatolia, Persia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Levant, the Mamluk state of Egypt or Northern Africa, were used as decorative features in Western European paintings from the 14th century onwards. More depictions of Oriental carpets in Renaissance painting survive than actual carpets contemporary with these paintings. Few Middle-Eastern carpets produced before the 17th century remain, though the number of these known has increased in recent decades. Therefore, comparative art-historical research has from its onset in the late 19th century relied on carpets represented in datable European paintings.
context_section_description: The perception of Oriental carpets during the Renaissance is characterized by three main aspects: 
  Due to their perceived rarity, preciousness and strangeness, Oriental carpets were depicted as a background for saints and religious scenes. Later on, the religious iconography was taken over by politically powerful persons in order to assert their status and power.
  Oriental carpets were more generally perceived as a rare commodity, and objects of luxury and decoration. From the mid 16th century onwards, the iconological context sometimes extended towards the idea of profligacy or vanity.
  When contacts, often of a violent nature, grew closer between the Islamic world and Europe, Oriental carpets were sometimes used as a symbol of Christian self-assertion.
  In any case, Oriental carpets were used in Western Europe in different ways and contexts than in the Islamic world, and their original cultural context was never fully understood.
caption: At the top, detail of the Virgin's mantle hem in Antonio Vivarini's Saint Louis de Toulouse, 1450. At the bottom, detail of the Virgin's mantle hem in Jacopo Bellini's Virgin of Humility, 1440. Louvre Museum.
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