In the house museum’s new project room, UNICUM is launching a six-monthly exhibition format dedicated, on each occasion, to a single work from the Cerruti Collection. The programme brings lesser-known works to the forefront, highlighting their formal, historical and symbolic qualities. Through a process of analysis and narration, each work is reinterpreted in relation to the collector and the domestic context in which it is housed. 

The first exhibition presents an Isfahan carpet from the reign of Shah Abbas the Great, woven in the workshops of the Safavid court between the last decade of the 16th century and the mid-17th century. Knotted with silk pile and gold and silver threads, the carpet bears the coats of arms of the Polish aristocracy and belongs to the group of so-called ‘Polonaises’, examples of Persian craftsmanship produced as diplomatic gifts for the embassies of the Persian Empire at Western courts. The example in the Cerruti Collection is distinguished by the extraordinary refinement of its design and comes from the collection of Paul Getty in Malibu.