Images(11)

Hunting carpet

Aqa Mirak and Sultan Muhammad (Persian)

Shah Tahmasp (Persian, ruled 1524–1576)

about 1530

Object PlaceIran

Medium/TechniqueSilk warp and weft with silk knotted pile, with supplementary metal-wrapped patterning wefts

Dimensions480.1 x 225 cm (189 x 88 9/16 in.)

Credit LineMuseum purchase with funds from the Centennial Purchase Fund, John Goelet, and unrestricted textile purchase funds

Accession number66.293

On View

Not on view

ClassificationsTextiles

Collections

Provenance19th century, Torrigiani family, Florence; 1870s, sold by the Marchese Torrigiani to Stefano Bardini (b. 1836 - d. 1922), Florence [see note 1]; between 1877 and 1892, sold by Bardini to Adolphe de Rothschild (b. 1823 - d. 1900), Paris; by inheritance to his grand-nephew, Maurice de Rothschild (b. 1881 - d. 1957), Geneva. Between 1957 and 1966 acquired, probably from the Rothschild family, by Rosenberg and Stiebel, New York; 1966, sold by Rosenberg and Stiebel to the MFA. (Accession Date: May 13, 1966)

NOTES:
[1] Bardini offered the carpet to Wilhelm von Bode as early as 1877; this information was first provided to the MFA by Thomas J. Farnham, and the letter has been published by Valerie Niemeyer Chini, Stefano Bardini e Wilhelm Bode (Florence, 2009), p. 222, letter XV.11 (June 27, 1877); also see pp. 97-98. The carpet was in the Rothschild collection by 1892; see Wilhlem von Bode, Altpersische Knüpfteppiche (Berlin, 1892), p. 13. Bode later published Vorderasiatische Knüpfteppiche aus alter Zeit (Leipzig, 1902), noting (on p. 10) that about 25 years earlier, the Marchese Torrigiani had sold the carpet to Bardini for 150 francs, and that Bardini subsequently sold it to Rothschild for 30,000 francs.