By Nora Hamerman
Special to the Herald
(From the issue of 8/26/04)

The biggest surprise in the current loan exhibition of Islamic art at the National Gallery in Washington is a sumptuous oriental "carpet" that turns out, on closer look, not to be a carpet at all. Made in the early 17th century in Isfahan (modern-day Iran), this precious knotted silk and brocaded textile is actually a cope, the principal vestment that a priest wears while celebrating Mass.

It displays striking images of the Crucifixion and Annunciation, next to the kind of ornamental scrollwork we commonly link to Islamic art in the Persian region. A just-discovered fragmentary inscription on the cope has a phrase from the "Magnificat" chanted by the Blessed Virgin Mary during the Visitation.

The Isfahan cope now belongs to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, which has lent a selection of precious Islamic artifacts to the National Gallery for the exhibition "Palace and Mosque," on display until Jan. 5.

"Islamic" in this context means art "produced by a culture in which not everyone was Muslim, but in which Islam played a dominant role," beginning with the founding of the first Muslim-rule state in the seventh century, and ending with the fall of the Ottoman sultan and the Qajar dynasty in Iran in the early 20th century.

Most of the regimes that came into being in the Middle East in the 1920s were secular, but today the pendulum seems to be swinging in the other direction. In the interests of peace, this makes it timely to renew Western Christian appreciation for Islamic art.

One misconception that the "Palace and Mosque" show identifies and explains is the idea that Islamic art can never include human or animal representation. It is true that Mohammed took the Jewish prohibition on graven images very seriously, and this led to the remarkable development of calligraphy in representing Holy Writ (Koran) in the first centuries of Islam. Yet the strict Muslim ban on figurative art was enforced only for religious settings, at least, in most countries. In the total absence of a priesthood, a rich court culture grew up encouraging un-Islamic activities like dancing, astrology, drinking wine, and sponsoring art that illustrated secular myths and stories.

Moreover, most countries ruled by Muslims had significant Christian and other religious minorities who took part in many aspects of cultural life.

The Isfahan cope might have been made for the Armenian church (which had adopted elements of Catholic iconography as well as Western vestments in the Middle Ages) or, possibly it could have been a gift from the Shah ‘Abbas, the Muslim ruler who had moved the capital of Iran to Isfahan. The shah paid for the decoration of the first Catholic church in the city, founded by Portuguese priests of the Augustinian order in 1602.

Even more striking than Christian art produced in Islamic lands, however, is the legacy of Islamic decorative art to the West. If your church has an oriental rug before the altar, or a chalice inlaid with gold or silver, you have probably been uplifted by this special display of beauty to the glory of God, but may never have thought about where it came from.

Indeed, once we open our eyes, we see that "oriental" luxury objects sparked the Italian Renaissance. Oriental meant either ceramics or silks that came all the way from China through Islamic-ruled lands, or that originated in Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Egypt and Iran and were shipped to the West in the thriving trade that continued all through the Middle Ages despite the wars between Europe and the Muslim states. The trade went both ways, and the exhibit has some fascinating examples of Turkish vessels that showed the influence, in reverse, of European metalcraft.

In conjunction with the show, the National Gallery is offering a Web feature on the objects in its permanent collection that show Western fascination with the decorative arts of Muslim lands. This was developed by Rosamond Mack, author of the recent book, Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300-1600. She quotes a wealthy Florentine in 1384: "Really all of Christendom could be supplied for a year with the merchandise of Damascus."

Islamic luxury goods appealed to Christians for three main reasons. One, due to the Muslim ban on figures in religious art, there was no overt content that would be contrary to Christianity; what dominated were the abstract designs we call "arabesques." Two, the objects were far superior in craft to anything produced in the West in the same period. And three, they were mostly small, portable objects that could easily travel on the trade routes.

A striking example of this impact is the National Gallery’s small devotional painting, the "Madonna of Humility" by Gentile da Fabriano, dating from the early 1400s at the dawn of the Renaissance in Italy. Gentile was the preeminent painter of his day, who worked for popes and princes and the great Florentine merchant families. The Blessed Virgin, holding her squirming Infant Christ, sits on the ground rather than a throne (hence "humility"), but there is nothing humble about the picture otherwise.

The hem and neckline of her rich velvet mantle are embroidered in an elegant gold border with Latin phrases in honor of her unique status, proclaiming "Full of Grace" and "Mother of God." Remarkably, her golden halo is also inscribed, not in Latin, rather in a kind of pseudo-Arabic lettering adopted from Islamic textiles that would have quoted the Koran or perhaps glorified a Muslim ruler.

Here is the historical context for this little gem of Catholic art. During the 1420s, the papacy had been recently restored following the Great Schism of the West. Western unity was especially urgent in order to resist the military threat to Constantinople, the last bastion of Christian rule in the Middle East, before the onslaught of Turkish Ottoman forces. Throughout the succeeding decades, popes sought to persuade the rulers of Europe to take up the crusade to defend Europe against the Turk.

At the same time, there were constant overtures for peace. In 1454, after tens of thousands of Christians were slaughtered in the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans, Cardinal Nicolaus of Cusa, a close companion of Popes Nicholas V and Pius II, wrote his dialogue "On Peace Among the Faiths," in which he imagined a heavenly meeting convened by The Word, to find common ground among many different religious confessions, including an Arab, a Jew, an Indian, a Chaldean and various nationalities of European Christians.

Cusa's dialogue begins, "Due to the news of the atrocities which had recently been reported to have taken place in a most cruel fashion at Constantinople, at the hand of the king of the Turks, a certain individual, fired with the love of God, and since he had visited the aforementioned region, prayed with much weeping and besought the Creator of all that He might, out of compassion, alleviate the persecution that was raging there because of a difference of religious rites."

A few years later, Pope Pius II wrote to Sultan Mehmet II, who had conquered Constantinople, urging him to accept Mary as the Mother of God. On this basis, he suggested, Christians and Muslims could discover that they have nothing to fight about. Of course, such a gesture would mean nothing less than acceptance of the Incarnation of Christ as God, not merely as another prophet as Muslim belief holds. We may see it as naive today, but it is a striking indication of how strongly leaders in the Roman Catholic Church at that time believed that the roots of a common faith could be found with Muslims, just as Western Christians admired and avidly collected the products of Islamic art.

For more information go to www.nga.gov and look for "Artistic Exchange."