Carpet

Art Historical Context

The carpet displays a luminous central medallion in soft golds and creams set against a deep red field, surrounded by gracefully posed deer, tigers, and other animals. A wide border of repeating floral and cloud motifs in dark greens and reds frames the entire composition, with the dense pattern unified by fine, precisely knotted wool pile that catches the light across its surface. Created in the second half of the sixteenth century, this textile is woven with silk warps, cotton wefts, and asymmetrically knotted wool pile. It belongs to the Metropolitan Museum’s holdings of Islamic art and demonstrates the refined balance of naturalistic animal forms and geometric structure that characterized court-quality carpets of the period. Such works were valued both for their practical use and for the skill evident in every knot.