Carved Door Panel

late 15th century
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 455
The intricate carvings of interlaced vine scrolls found on this door may be compared to similar relief decoration in stone carvings of the fifteenth century and to contemporary manuscript illuminations. This phenomenon may reflect the establishment of royal workshops in the course of the fifteenth century throughout Persia, which aided in the centralization and sharing of designs across media and fueled the emergence of common regional design vocabularies.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Carved Door Panel
  • Date: late 15th century
  • Geography: Made in present-day Uzbekistan, Samarqand
  • Medium: Cypress; carved, traces of paint
  • Dimensions: H. 82 in. (208.3 cm)
    Gr. H. 88 1/2 in. (224.8 cm)
    W. 30 3/4 in. (78.1 cm)
    D. 2 1/2 in. (6.4 cm)
    Wt. 127 lbs. (57.6 kg)
  • Classification: Wood
  • Credit Line: Rogers Fund, 1923
  • Object Number: 23.67.7
  • Curatorial Department: Islamic Art

Audio

Cover Image for 6707. Carved Door Panel

6707. Carved Door Panel

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SHEILA CANBY: This is one half of a carved wooden door. …It was found in Khokand, which is in Uzbekistan –… modern Uzbekistan, in the area that was controlled the Timurids, The door has been divided into zones. And so the central cartouche-shaped zone has lots of deeply carved floral elements, and then around it, we have more floral and sort of arabesque or scroll devices in another section, and then the outer border has a more geometric type of pattern going all the way around. Wood deteriorates, and you can see here there's a terrible crack right down the middle. And it's interesting that in its carving and its style it should be so closely related to stone carving, of which we have many more examples because it's much more durable. One can still see doors like this… in some mosques and shrines and other buildings in both northeastern Iran and in Uzbekistan and that region in central Asia.

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