Page 326 - Decorative Arts, Part II: Far Eastern Ceramics and Paintings, Persian and Indian Rugs and Carpets

type. The Mughal aristocratic classes had a special rever- swirls. Only the field's bottom quarter lacks such a dom-
ence for objets d'art from the Herat area because of their inant figure, although the small elephant peeking out of
Timurid heritage. 7 It is, therefore, not surprising that the foliage commands the viewers' attention.
Indian weavers derived both the exuberant animals and This energetic field is framed by a compartment bor-
vinework configuration from East Persian carpets and der whose basic design, composed of alternating car-
rugs associated with the city, such as the Widener touches and quatrefoils, is associated with Herat-type
Medallion and Animal Carpet (1942.9.477). carpets. 9 Set against a background of dark pink
Although it has not been tested, the intense color of arabesque work, the ivory cartouches contain human
the Widener rug's bluish red field and border is pre- faces positioned between profile animal heads and pal-
10
sumed to have been produced from a typically Indian mettes. Each blue quatrefoil contains a single pink par-
cochineal-like insect dye called lac. The unusually tridge that is alternately represented standing or in flight.
crowded field features a diverse repertory of animals Both the faces and the birds are oriented outward.
who energetically fight and pursue one another in all Beattie has pointed out that similar grotesques appear in
directions. Mythological creatures of Chinese derivation, a palmette-field Mughal carpet (Kestner Museum,
the dragon, lion ch'i-lins^ and the stag dii-lins with drag- Hanover), which also features partridges set in octafoils, 11
on heads, are shown with their Indian counterparts such and in the center of palmettes in the main border of a
as the gharial, winged wolves, and the human-headed large fragment of another floral carpet (Musee
12
ch'i-lin. These fantastic creatures inhabit the same jungle Historique des Tissus, Lyons). A similar border appears
as the elephants, cheetahs, blackbucks, leopards, single- in an unpublished rug (Tokugawa Museum, Nagoya,
horned rhinoceros, and crocodile, all of which are ani- Japan) that cicumstantial documentary evidence sug-
mals indigenous to East Asia and India. Like their Persian gests was presented to the Emperor of Japan by the
predecessors, the animal forms in Mughal rugs were Dutch in 1650. Beattie theorized that since faces similar
probably transferred from piece to piece with small-scale to these were a common ornament in European paint-
carpet patterns and cartoons. Many of them are set in the ings and furnishings, they "may reflect the popularity of
attenuated "flying gallop" stance (a convention that dates such motifs in the art and architecture of the late
13
back to Scythian art) in order to create the impression Renaissance and Baroque." Although Western art exert-
that they are moving at maximum speed. This feature is ed a strong influence on Mughal miniature painting,
common to many Mughal animal carpets, but the crea- masks flanked by profile animal heads appear in late six-
tures in the Widener rug move with a velocity and spon- teenth-century Safavid "Sanguszko" carpets attributed to
taneity that is unequaled in other examples. The Kirman, such as the inner guard stripe of the incomplete
carefully composed distribution of major design ele- pictorial carpet in the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris. 14
ments whose forms possess considerable visual appeal In the absence of documentary evidence necessary to
prevents the field from degenerating into an overly fit the surviving Mughal rugs and carpets into a con-
detailed panoply of minute forms. The mahout imper- vincing chronological framework, it is difficult to deter-
turbably riding his small, dark-skinned Indian elephant mine the Widener rug's place in their stylistic
across the field in the rug's center, oblivious to the melee development. The rug was rather speculatively said to
that surrounds him, serves as a centerpiece. The pair of have been made at Lahore when it was exhibited at the
15
fighting camels above him, and the tiger and leopard Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1910. The idea gained
locked in combat below, assume the role of pendants. further credence when it was observed that the design of
The composition is further stabilized by the rhinoceros, a fragment portraying two elephants facing each other in
16
8
the eared crocodile, and the gluttonous dragon, whose combat (The Textile Museum, Washington) was similar
forms create fixed focal points around which the action to tile decorations at the fort in Lahore. Only two

310 D E C O R A T I V E A R T S