Tile Spandrel with Floral Sprays
Unknown Artist
c. 1570–75
Medium
Fritware with red slip and underglaze design
Dimensions
76 × 29.9 × 2.5 cm
Classification
Ceramic
Department
Islamic Art
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Dudley P. Allen Fund
Accession Number
2004.70
About this artwork
This spandrel, along with its missing right half, would have formed a decorative archway over a niche, window, or door. It reveals the artistic and technical height achieved in Iznik, a town in northwest Turkey. Craftspeople from Iznik were renowned for their production of brilliantly colored tiles for the Ottoman sultans, rulers of one of the most powerful empires in history. The intense red on this spandrel was a technical triumph achieved with a thick iron-rich clay slip. Here, it forms red r...