Tile Mosaic Panel (glazed pottery)

Made in Isfahan, Iran. Safavid Dynasty (1501-1722). Architecture has provided the most visible "canvas" for Islamic art, achieving particularly sophisticated expression during the reign of the Safavid court at Isfahan in Persia. This mosaic panel is one of a group installed in the Museum that are said to have come from a sixteenth-century monastery of the Sufi branch of Islam, but Persian buildings of all sorts, both sacred and secular, were covered inside and out with such elaborately decorated ceramic tiles. The glazed turquoise, cobalt blue, faun, white, and black colors of this panel are clear and brilliant, and the small ceramic pieces form a mosaic pattern whose predominant motifs are round star medallions that alternate with symmetrical floral palmettes in vases. These abstracted designs are meant not so much to emulate nature as to reflect the infinite perfection and ideal order of the universe. The complex pattern is repeated in the series of tile panels that encircle the room, giving a rich sense of depth to the space. Felice Fischer, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p. 64.