Oriental Carpets in Renaissance Paintings: Holbein, Lotto and the Table Carpet

By Storied Rugs6 min read

A dusty rose vintage Anatolian runner draped over a dark oak table like a Renaissance table carpet, with a brass candlestick, a plain book and a stoneware bowl

Oriental carpets turn up again and again in Renaissance paintings, and most of them are Turkish carpets from Anatolia. Painters in Italy and northern Europe showed them draped over tables and hung on walls, because to own one was a sign of wealth. Several carpet designs are still named after the painters who recorded them: Holbein, Lotto, Memling and Ghirlandaio. The paintings show what those carpets looked like and how Europe used them, and their way of drawing still links them to the Anatolian rugs of the last century.

Why the carpets are in the paintings

Turkish carpets were the oriental carpets Western Europe knew best, because they had been imported from Turkey since at least the middle of the fifteenth century.^[1] Carpets were a popular feature of Italian interiors, particularly in Venice with its trade links to the Middle East.^[2]

Once they arrived, they rarely went on the floor. Carpets from the Islamic world were too precious to be walked on in Europe, so they were used to cover furniture or hung on walls.^[3] That is why so many paintings show a carpet thrown over a table. A rug made in Anatolia for a floor became, in Europe, a table covering and a sign of its owner’s wealth and standing.^[4]

Painting of a married couple seated at a table covered with a red Turkish carpet with a geometric medallion and border, the wife holding a small white dog — Lorenzo Lotto, Husband and Wife, about 1523. The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. A red Turkish carpet with a geometric medallion and a wide border covers the table.

The Holbein carpet

The Holbein carpet takes its name from a portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger that shows a similar carpet draped over a table.^[5] Its pattern is built from small, knot-like medallions set in a network of diamond-shaped strapwork, and many later carpet patterns grew out of it.^[5] These carpets were woven in Anatolia as early as the fourteenth century and became popular in Europe from the fifteenth century on.^[5]

Holbein painted carpets with unusual care. In The Ambassadors, finished in 1533, a red Turkish carpet covers the upper shelf of the table between the two men, under globes and scientific instruments.^[6] Up close you can see the individual knots, painted one by one, and the carpet rippling slightly at its edges.^[6]

Painting of two men standing either side of a two-shelf table, the upper shelf covered with a red Turkish carpet under globes and scientific instruments — Hans Holbein the Younger, The Ambassadors, 1533. The National Gallery, London. A red Turkish carpet covers the upper shelf of the table, painted closely enough that its knots show.

Painting of a young merchant at a table covered with a patterned oriental carpet, a glass vase of carnations and writing tools in front of him — Hans Holbein the Younger, The Merchant Georg Gisze, 1532. Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. The merchant’s desk is covered with a carpet, its border and geometric field painted in close detail.

The Lotto carpet

Lotto carpets are easier to spot. Their field is filled with stylized yellow arabesques on a red ground.^[7] They were made mainly for export in the western Turkish weaving center of Ushak, between the 1400s and the 1600s.^[4] The name comes from the Venetian painter Lorenzo Lotto, who lived from 1480 to 1556 and often painted them.^[4]

Lotto was far from the only painter to use them. Lotto carpets appear in some 200 paintings from the Netherlands alone during the sixteenth century.^[4] The design stayed popular for more than a hundred years.^[2] And Europeans displayed them on tables to preserve them, even though the carpets had been made for the floor.^[4]

Memling, Ghirlandaio and the habit of naming

The habit did not stop with two painters. Certain carpet designs became known in Europe by the names of the artists who painted them.^[1] Memling carpets are classical Anatolian carpets of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, named after the Netherlandish painter Hans Memling, who showed them in his religious works.^[8] Ghirlandaio carpets are named for the Italian painter Domenico Ghirlandaio, in whose paintings they sometimes appear.^[9]

The names are a convenience, not a statement about who designed the carpets. The paintings are simply a good record of what those carpets looked like and how Europeans lived with them. Who invented rugs goes further back, to the oldest carpet that does survive.

What links them to Anatolian rugs today

The geometric language of those early carpets did not disappear. The Met notes that many Shahsevan tribal weavings of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially those with centralized geometric designs, show a striking relationship with Anatolian carpets of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.^[8]

Our Anatolian rugs are village rugs from the twentieth century, not Renaissance carpets, and we would not pretend otherwise. What they share with the carpets in the paintings is that way of drawing: shapes built from steps and straight lines, often a medallion or two stacked down the field. The Anatolian rugs guide explains how to recognize one.

Study seen from high above, a faded taupe Anatolian rug with two stacked stepped medallions in greige and khaki on dark oak boards, a walnut desk and wooden chair at its far edge — An Anatolian, 4 feet 4 inches by 7 feet 10 inches. Two stepped medallions in greige and khaki stacked on a taupe ground, built from the same straight lines and steps as the carpets in the paintings.

Living with one the Renaissance way

You can still use a rug the way those households did. A narrow rug laid along a long table, or folded over a side table, protects the wood and brings the pattern up to eye level. A low-pile rug works best for this, because it lies flat and things stand steadily on it. All of our rugs have a low pile. If you would rather put one on the wall, how to hang a rug on the wall shows how to do it without straining the rug.

On the floor, of course, a rug does what it was made to do. Ours are about fifty years old and were made to be walked on.

Hallway seen from high at one end, a faded dusty rose Anatolian runner with a large hooked medallion and stepped corners on dark oak boards, daylight from a side window — An Anatolian runner, 3 feet 8 inches by 8 feet 2 inches. A large hooked medallion on dusty rose with stepped corners at each end, on the kind of floor it was woven for.

Where to see more

The carpets themselves are in museum collections, and the sources below link to some of them. For rugs you can live with, browse our Anatolian rugs or the wider Turkish collection, and read the ultimate guide to Turkish rugs for the regions. If you are unsure what the word oriental covers, oriental rug vs Persian rug explains it.