This rug of the kind named after the painter Lorenzo Lotto, who depicted at least two in two different works (fig. 1), is the older and more valuable of the two in the Cerruti Collection (N. Cat A686). A few hundred specimens are known in private collections and museums, and they are thought to have been woven over a long period from the late 15th century to the mid- 18th. The earliest specimens had a very broad field and narrow borders, often decorated with interlaced pseudo- Kufic motifs, whereas the later ones display degeneration of the design, which loses symmetry and presents an increasingly narrow central field and broader borders decorated with square cartouches and a summary pattern. The “Lotto” type is characterised by continuous arabesque decoration in yellow on a red ground but actually comprises two distinct motifs, namely a sort of octagon and a cross-shaped diamond. The composition is very complex and hard to decipher at first sight, as the two elements are entwined and the resulting image is of a single modular motif just like that of a fabric. The decoration of the field can be more or less curvilinear or geometric. The Cerruti carpet is an example of what is known as the “ornamented” style by virtue of the abundance of volutes and small hooked elements in the arabesques. 

The border with a meander motif, narrow and well-proportioned with respect to the central field, and the perfect symmetry of the design suggest a date at the end of the 16th century, meaning that this is one of the earliest known examples of this style. This particular border pattern is in fact very rare and, to the best of our knowledge, found only in two other “Lotto” carpets: a small one that appeared on the Italian market about thirty years ago¹ and a large fragment in the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art in Istanbul, the latter presenting arabesques of a more geometric character in what is conventionally known as the Kilim style² The border is accompanied by two smaller guards, the inner being very narrow and consisting of a simple chain of S-shaped elements in ivory white on a black ground, and the outer much broader with a similar but far more complex and elaborate motif in yellow on a red ground. All in all, this is a very elegant and finely crafted item, perhaps indeed the best of the Ottoman Anatolian carpets in the Cerruti Collection. 

Alberto Boralevi 

¹ Published in a page of advertisements in the magazine Hali, 52, pp. 36-37 (Meschoulam). 

² Published in THC 1990, vol. 3, no. 0305.