punto di vista, by Paolo Da sempre, nel comune sentire, il tappeto è legato al medio oriente e all’Islam. In effetti, proprio nel Medio Oriente il tappeto vanta una tradizione antica, anche se poco documentata [1], che lo porterà to experience its moment of maximum splendor with the Safavid and Ottoman empires, also helped by the acquis in this religious significance in promoting the rule of prayer.
Eighteen years ago, ran the year 1991, the famous publisher Benedikt Taschen releases "The Christian Oriental carpet" by Volkmar Gantzhorn (subtitle: Development iconography and iconology from its origins to the eighteenth century), in which the author sought to address " ... the problem of carpet Christian East as part of a comprehensive review of the history of carpet, seeking to show that "the wealth of reasons, the oriental carpet is an Armenian identity and how that must be designed .
The publication of the work of Gantzhorn represented something truly revolutionary in the world of scholars and enthusiasts.
I read the book in question a decade ago, then a recent fan of carpet, and I was struck, like St. Paul on the road to Damascus. Over time, however, had to deal with the difficulty of pigeon-Gantzhorn's arguments with those of other scholars and with the minimum of critical discernment, along the way, I had developed.
About the causes that made the little known Armenian-Christian origin of the carpet, Gantzhorn states that "... with the First World War, the political and demographic structures also underwent profound changes in Eastern Europe and front ... the persecution of Christians in the late nineteenth century, ethnocide of Armenians in 1894-1915 ... radically changed the context of the previous century. All field studies were condition is false, they were forced to do less confusing, do not correspond in any way to actual reality. Kurt Erdmann only in 1955 began a new attempt to outline a history of oriental rug [2]. However, the same
Erdmann is not exempt from criticism of Gantzhorn, which challenges the assumptions Pastoral-nomadic origin of the carpet, by the ancient peoples of Central Asia, the author of "The carpet Eastern Christian sees in it a product so advanced that they can only be achieved in a more sedentary, village or citizen. Erdman is accused of deliberately altered the translation of the report of Marco Polo to come to identify the descendants of migrants in Asia Minor Turkmen carpet weavers who would have admired the Venetian traveler to Iconium (Konya), describing the "Million" as " them sovereign carpets in the world and the finest .
In fact, at the time of the passage of Mark in Anatolia, the Turkish people had returned to the practice of pastoralism "in the mountains and 'n valley " citizens and artisans, Greeks and Armenians, it is expected that the creation of the carpets observed, fragments of which were found seven centuries later in Alaeddin Mosque in Konya thereof. For
Gantzhorn then "... the hypothesis of a birth in the space of knotted carpet in the West through an import Turkmen and Turkish people, Seljuk, is untenable and devoid of any foundation .
A people of nomadic origin-guerrriere as the Seljuks had a tradition of darkening dell'annodatura addressed toward a production of domestic utility. I personally believe that the Seljuks were more adept at working stone, ceramics and metals, and suggested that their tradition in dell'annodatura, although in ancient time, was pretty rough, not surprising that contact with a more refined manufacturing, which could be called "Byzantine", the Seljuks have chosen to promote it, perhaps for reasons of decorum by making grafts traditional Turkmen.
Gantzhorn is categorical in the allocation of antique carpets: the Armenians, "... the manufacture of carpets in the "Armenian cultural space" is up documentation già nell’ottavo secolo e ad essa segue nel decimo secolo il centro di Murcia in Spagna ”. E poco oltre rincara la dose affermando: “ Poichè le fonti suddette confermano l’esistenza, nel primo secolo, di tappeti annodati nell’Armenia cristiana e lì soltanto, sembra lecito chiedersi se questi tappeti non possano o debbano essere cristiani, se le croci e i simboli in essi rappresentati non siano più di una pura decorazione ”.
Non è chiaro a quali fonti del primo secolo alluda l’autore; forse all’indiretta menzione a tappeti all’ingresso di Gesù in Gerusalemme, ove i discepoli, non disponendo di tappeti, stendono davanti a lui i loro mantelli e cut green branches in the fields [3].
Gantzhorn passes carefully reviewed a large number of carpets stating that " Most carpets have decorations that match the needs of ornamentation Christian and, moreover, are clearly Christian in content " and "the central theme of all groups of carpets treated here is the cross, that it is a unique form of a central or part of an endless coverage of the surface decoration "and not" The symbols in the carpets are Christians, despite its extremely varied carpets, very limited in number, the forms are due to cross a few basic shapes.
" The decorations that appear in the carpets belong without exception to a chain of very traditional forms dating back in time, pre-Christian era. It is a synthesis of elements of late Hittite, Urartian and Phrygian. Traditional forms are reproduced and developed in identical form by contenutiscamente Monophysite churches of Eastern Christian Armenians and Syrians. The proto-symbols and signs of this art, that arise in contrast with that of classical figurative, were transferred as a result of the war, migration flows, of grubbing and missions, in the art of the West and the East .
" The starting point was the spiritual" Armenian cultural space, "even in times when it was fragmented by the different paths of political boundaries. Waves of emigration, mainly to western Anatolia, Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean countries, forced relocation to Greece, Persia and Central Asia have affected the transfer and re-establishment of production regions in East and West, resulting in transformation and formal change of the ancient heritage. "
" By its nature as a symbol of power and domination within the land and the spiritual, the carpet access is growing in churches and homes of the powerful and painting, so that we find depictions of carpets in Armenia from the eleventh century and in Europe since the thirteenth. For the vast spread of the Christian faith in Asia in mid-thirteenth century, we find carpets with Christian ornamentation even in China and the Sung period, then in the painting of IlCane and subsequent Timurid .
today that "The carpet Eastern Christian" has come of age, many criticisms can be brought to the conclusions of Gantzhorn. Meanwhile, I consider it significant that the author, in this long period of time, has published more avanzamenti sull’argomento e che le sue teorie trovino scarsa o nessuna risonanza nei più recenti volumi (e nelle nuove edizioni) degli altri autori.
La maggiore perplessità che ricavo dalla lettura del volume riguarda il metodo di lavoro, ovvero l’ossessiva ricerca di croci cristiane nei motivi di decoro, costi quel che costi; come ho già accennato altrove [4], credo che la decorazione dei tappeti debba in qualche modo sfuggire a stretti criteri di catalogazione, di attribuzione di significati simbolici archetipi, essendo in primissimo luogo espressione della fantasia e del genio artistico dell’annodatore. Le croci rinvenute nei tessili potrebbero talvolta essere non necessariamente motivi cristiani, ma più trivially decorative.
Gantzhorn should be in favor of having meticulously recovered traces of a manufacturing Armenian tradition, the most important for him to say that carpets and textiles in general ".... objects of worship of the Christian churches of the East ... represent the most important contribution to the history of Armenian world. "
This painstaking work of a revaluation of Christian origin in the carpet, that later we'll meet, and sometimes be overwhelmed by Islam, is certainly the best result of the work of Gantzhorn.
At worst, the reader who wanted to reject in toto the findings Volkmar Gantzhorn, will remain a beautifully illustrated volume documenting the history of the old carpet.
Notes.
1. See in this same magazine: " The carpet in the Middle East before the age Safavid .
2. Erdmann K. Der Orientalische Knüpfteppich . Tubingen, 1955.
3. New Testament, Luke 19: 36-38, Mark 11: 7-10, Matthew 21: 8-9.
4. See in this same magazine: "The carpet and the dream."
June 23, 2009
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