Vase with Arabesque Design

This vase with a wide bowl and short neck is decorated with overall arabesque designs in horizontal bands and traces of inlaid silver that are particularly visible on the bottom. Until recently it was believed that such inlaid brass objects were made from the mid-fifteenth century onward by so-called lavori all’azzimina, Syrian immigrant metalworkers in Venice.(1) However, in 1970 this theory was proven incorrect, as there was little evidence for the presence of Islamic craftsmen in the Serenissima.(2) Most of the inlaid brasswork is now generally considered to be a typical Mamluk export product from Syrian, Egyptian, and even Persian workshops, imported into Venice during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.(3) These products were highly in demand among the Italian cultural elite; in inventories of the time they are often referred to as domaschini, or alla domaschina, referring to their Damascene origin.(4) They often combine intricate Islamic patterns of arabesques with Western shapes and forms such as candlesticks, lidded boxes, or wine cups. Although technically and artistically slightly less accomplished, this densely decorated vase is related to a number of signed metal vessels by masters like Zayn al-Din ‘Umar and Mu’allim Mahmud al-Kurdi, whose styles represent an innovative phase in the development of Mamluk metalwork. A virtually identical work in Berlin is dated March 1505 by an inscription in Arabic.(5) Another vase of comparable form and technique, considered Persian and of the late fifteenth century, is kept in the Bargello.(6) It has a well-documented provenance, belonging to a group of five Islamic pieces of inlaid brass from the collection of Ferdinando de’ Medici that was exhibited in the Tribuna of the Uffizi in 1589.(7) On the basis of similarities to these documented or dated pieces, the Lehman vase should be ascribed to the early sixteenth century.

Catalogue entry from: Frits Scholten. The Robert Lehman Collection. European Sculpture and Metalwork, Vol. XII. Frits Scholten, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Princeton University Press, 2011, p. 242.

Notes:
1. Lavoix, Henri. "Les azziministes." Gazette des beaux-arts 12 (1 January), 1862, pp. 64 – 74.
2. Huth, Hans. "‘Sarazenen’ in Venedig?" In Festschrift für Heinz Ladendorf, edited by Peter Bloch and Gisela Zick, pp. 58 – 68. Cologne, 1970.
3. Mack, Rosamond E. Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300 – 1600. Berkeley, 2002, p. 142; Auld, Sylvia. "Master Mahmud and Inlaid Metalwork in the 15th Century." In Venice and the Islamic World, 828 – 1797, pp. 212 – 25. Exhibition, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, 2 October 2006 – 18 February 2007; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 27 March – 8 July 2007. Catalogue. New York, 2007.
4. Mack, p. 144.
5. Kühnel, Ernst. "Neuerwerbungen: Islamische Abteilung." Berliner Museen 56, no. 3, 1935, p. 71.
6. Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, 289B.
7. Spallanzani, Marco. "Metalli islamici nelle collezioni medicee dei secoli XV – XVI." In Candace Adelson et al., Le arti del principato mediceo, pp. 95 – 115. Specimen 6. Florence, 1980, pp. 103 – 4; Mack, p. 145

Maurice Chabrières-Arlès, Oullins, until 1903.