This spotlight loan presents a masterpiece of woven art from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, one of the oldest and most comprehensive collections of Islamic art in North America.

It belongs to a well-known group of weavings called “Holbein” carpets, so named because similarly designed weavings appear in works by the German artist Hans Holbein the Younger (ca. 1497–1543), among other European painters. Carpets of this type were originally produced in western Anatolia (present-day Türkiye) and were widely traded across Europe.  

This splendid example was made not in Anatolia but in southeast Spain, where weavers skillfully adapted such eastern Mediterranean designs to local carpet-making traditions. These artists were likely Muslim who continued their practices even after the region came under Christian rule in the thirteenth century. While Spanish carpets like this one closely resemble their Anatolian models, technical examination of their underlying structures reveals their true origins.  

At the nexus of Turkish, Iberian, and northern European artistic traditions, the Boston Spanish Holbein carpet embodies the flourishing of cross-cultural exchange in the Mediterranean world at the dawn of the modern age. The Aga Khan Museum is proud to be the first venue to display the carpet following conservation in 2025 to preserve this masterpiece for future generations.