SHEILA CANBY: This grand gallery brings us into the world of the Ottomans. On the enormous platform in this room is a truly splendid carpet.Its opulence – and sheer size – gives us just a taste of the grandeur of Ottoman palaces and court life.

WALTER DENNY: A Turkish textile or an Ottoman textile is a textile basically based upon the court art of the Ottomans. There's a lot of sharing back and forth between textile and carpet design, textile and ceramic design, textile design and the designs of metalwork. These textiles show designs that are distinctively Ottoman. The Ottomans played for great effect: brilliant colors, large scale, and very, very dramatic designs derived from pen-on-paper originals created by court artists and then sent to the textile looms for conversion into luxury fabrics. The scale is frequently enormous, huge motifs that one can see from a great distance when they're worn by an important court official at a ceremony. And these robes of honor were not only worn by the sultans, themselves, but were given as gifts to top court officials and also to foreign ambassadors. So textiles meant a great deal more for status in Ottoman times than they ever do in modern society. Although there are several provincial centers of some importance, most of the textiles that you will see in the Metropolitan Museum in these galleries were produced in one of two centers. Bursa, the old Ottoman Turkish capital, and Istanbul, itself, the imperial capital from 1453 right down to 1923.

SHEILA CANBY: Look up and notice the Spanish ceiling in this room. Even after Spain was reconquered and came under Christian control, Spanish art continued to reflect Muslim traditions.