One of the most spectacular Iznik pieces in the Museum’s collection, this saucer‑shaped dish displays a palette of rich blue and bright turquoise characteristic of early Iznik ceramics. The floral scrolls on the cavetto are inspired by fifteenth-century Chinese celadon ware.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Dish
Date:mid-16th century
Geography:Made in Turkey, Iznik
Medium:Stonepaste; painted in turquoise and two hues of blue under transparent glaze
Dimensions:H. 3 in. (7.62 cm) Diam. 15 1/2 in. (39.4 cm)
Classification:Ceramics
Credit Line:Bequest of Benjamin Altman, 1913
Accession Number:14.40.727
Ceramic Plate
Unique in the history of Turkish ceramics, the design of this rimless dish is executed in turquoise together with two values of blue. The sources for the reticulated central field and the arabesque of lotus blossoms around the cavetto, or curved part of the dish, were long a mystery, until it was pointed out in 1972 that the dish was in fact an ingenious and highly creative adaptation of a famous and familiar Chinese Ming porcelain design.[1] Indeed, the original Chinese design, with a similar geometric grid and an arabesque of lotus blossoms, vines, and leaves, is found in Ming celadon wares, those pale gray-green ceramics so highly sought after by patrons of the Middle East in part because of their purported ability to detect poison added to food. So different in color is the Ottoman work from the Chinese prototype that the relation between the two traditions had long gone unnoticed.
In the artistic culture of Iznik ceramic wares, the concept of a set of identical objects was almost entirely absent. Each plate, each tankard, each vase, bottle, and jug was individually decorated, and even when a paper template was used the colors and details were never the same. In the middle third of the sixteenth century, in an extremely dynamic artistic atmosphere, Iznik artists were experimenting with new techniques (a polychrome palette), new shapes (expanding on the traditional repertoire of forms taken from Chinese porcelain or Islamic metalwork), and, above all, with new designs. When the Altman dish was created, an underglaze gray-green was available to Iznik artists, but it was a thin and uneven pigment totally different in effect from the thick and creamy pea-soup green of the Chinese celadons. Thus, the artist of the Metropolitan Museum’s dish took his design from a celadon prototype but chose to realize the conception in a painterly, delicate, and masterfully executed composition using a translucent blue and turquoise together with a darker cobalt blue. The Altman dish vividly illustrates the maxim that acts of artistic creation often begin with acts of creative seeing.
Walter B. Denny in [Ekhtiar, Soucek, Canby, and Haidar 2011]
Footnotes:
1. Pope 1972, pp. 135, 138.
Henry G. Marquand (American), New York (until 1903); Benjamin Altman, New York (until d. 1913; bequeathed to MMA)
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Art of Imperial Turkey and Its European Echoes," November 17, 1973–March 3, 1974, no catalogue.
The Hagop Kevorkian Special Exhibitions Gallery, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Flowers and Leaves: The Ottoman Pottery of Iznik," September 25, 1991–November 15, 1992, no catalogue.
Leidy, Denise Patry. "Longquan: A Selection from the Metropolitan Museum of Arts." Arts of Asia vol. 45, no. 2 (March–April 2015). pp. 118–28, ill. fig. 20.
Marquand, Henry G. Collection of Henry G. Marquand. January 1903. no. 1191.
Dimand, Maurice S. A Handbook of Mohammedan Decorative Arts. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1930. pp. 173–74, ill. fig. 104 (b/w).
Dimand, Maurice S. A Handbook of Muhammadan Art. 2nd rev. and enl. ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1944. p. 219, ill. fig. 144 (b/w).
Lane, Arthur. Later Islamic Pottery: Persia, Syria, Egypt, Turkey. London: Faber and Faber, 1957. pp. 45–47, ill. pl. 29B.
Lane, Arthur. "Ottoman Pottery of Isnik." Ars Orientalis vol. 2 (1957). p. 260, ill. figs. 25–26.
Lukens, Marie G. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide to the Collections: Islamic Art. vol. 9. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1965. p. 38, ill. fig. 53.
Grube, Ernst J. "The Ottoman Empire." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin vol. 26, no. 5 (January 1968). no. 17, pp. 204–5, ill. (b/w).
Pope, John A. "Chinese Influences on Iznik Pottery: A Re-examination of an Old Problem." Islamic Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1972). pp. 124, 138, ill. figs. 21 (b/w back), 27 (b/w front).
Denny, Walter B. The Ceramics of the Mosque of Rustem Pasha and the Environment of Change. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1977. pp. 260–61, ill. figs. 7, 32–34 (b/w).
Atil, Esin, ed. Turkish Art. Washington, D.C and New York: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1980. pp. 269, 279, ill. pl. 41 (color).
Atil, Esin. The Age of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. Washington, DC: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1987. no. 174, pp. 252–53, ill. (color).
Welch, Stuart Cary. The Islamic World. vol. 11. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987. pp. 120–21, ill. fig. 91 (color).
Atasoy, Nurhan, and Julian Raby. Iznik: The Pottery of Ottoman Turkey, edited by Yanni Petsopoulos. London: Thames and Hudson, 1989. no. 337, ill, (color).
Ekhtiar, Maryam, Priscilla P. Soucek, Sheila R. Canby, and Navina Haidar, ed. Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1st ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011. no. 210, pp. 4, 302–3, ill. (color).
Alexander, David G., and Stuart W. Pyhrr. "in the Metropolitan Museum of Art." In Islamic Arms and Armor. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015. p. 89, ill. fig. 23.
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