Ribbon Lattice with Pinecone (?)

Ribbon Latice with Pine Cone (?)

The design known as a lattice, diaper, or diamond pattern enjoyed great popularity during Late Antiquity in Roman, Byzantine, Persian, and Islamic art, especially in textiles.[1] A grid of diagonal lines crosses in an allover, expandable pattern. The grid may be composed of any motif. A crossing is usually marked by a distinctive motif. Here, each intersection is filled with a four-pedaled rosette within a thin circular frame; each heart-shaped petal faces a cardinal direction; and each lobe follows a different line of the grid. The diamond-shaped spaces between the grid lines are usually filled, as seen here. Several patterns found in in multiple examples, which may be distinguished by color and ornamental variations, may reflect the expected desires of consumers for distinction in serially produced items or the choices of individuals who commissioned distinct cloths.

This design is a close variation on that of MMA 2002.239.227. Against a red ground (faded to pink), the lattice pattern is worked in black (faded to dark brownish purple); short sections of curling ribbon are placed between widely spaced, thin lines. Changing proportions and discrepancies in the repetitions of each motif suggest manual execution rather than the precision and regularity that characterize weaving done on a fully mechanized loom.

Again, the featured motif, a pinecone (or perhaps an artichoke), stands on a plain, triangular base, as if it were a sculpture, like the sculpted pinecones found on fountains.[3] There may have been several associations for this motif; pinecone kernels (and artichokes) were eaten in Byzantium and thought to have a beneficial effect on health.[4] The motif was used in contemporaneous Islamic settings ( MMA 30.112.5, cat. no. 161 in this volume, where it is combined with pomegranates). A different rendering was identified as a pinecone or artichoke in the ninth-century carved wooden casing for tie beams in the West Gallery in Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, where they emerge from "Sassanian-Umayyad" split-palmette motifs.[5]

Thelma K. Thomas in [Evans and Ratliff 2012]

Footnotes:

1. Anna Gonosová. "The Formation and Sources of Early Byzantine Floral Semis and Floral Diaper Patterns Reexamined." In Studies on Art and Archaeology in Honor of Ernst Kitzinger on His Severty-Fifth Birthday, edited by William Tronzo and Irving Lavin, pp. 227–37. Washington, D.C., 1987.

3. A Byzantine tradition reaching back to the Constantinian period: William D. Wixom. "A Glimpse at the Fountains of the Middle Ages." Cleveland Studies in the History of Art 8 (2003), p. 8.

4. Andrew Dalby. Tastes of Byzantium: The Cuisine of a Legendary Empire. London, 2010, pp. 75, 79, 139,168, considers both their flavors and Byzantine beliefs of their beneficial effects. The pinecone is more prominent in traditional imagery, where it may have alluded to ancient votive offerings, sacred offerings, sacred groves, and the earth's bounty.Originally a pagan motif (sacred to Dionysos, placed atop his thyrsus, a giant fennel stalk), it had entered Jewish and Christian repertoires long before this period. Karen B. Stern. "Mapping Devotion in Roman Dura Europos: A Reconsideration of the Synagogue Ceiling." American Journal of Archaelogy 114 (July 2010), pp. 473–504, discusses the motif of the pinecone as found in the mid-third-century synagogue at Dura-Europos, among ceilings that also displayed fantastic creatures from myth, apotropaic motifs, and other vegetal motifs (pomegranates, grapes, apples), as well as dedicatory inscriptions: their "collective meaning ...remains elusive and polyvalent" (p. 501).

5. Carl D. Sheppard. "A Radiocarbon Date for the Wooden Tie Beams in the West Gallery of St. Sophia, Istanbul." Dumbarton Oaks Papers 19 (1965), p. 240, fig. 5.

[ Giorgio Sangiorgi (Italian), Rome, until 1946; to Loewi]; [ Adolph Loewi, Los Angeles, 1946; sold to MMA]

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Byzantine Gallery, Crypt Exhibition: Kelekian Loans," December 18, 2001–March 3, 2003.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition," March 14–July 8, 2012, no. 99B.

Evans, Helen C., and Brandie Ratliff, ed. Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012. no. 99B, pp. 149–50, ill. (color).