A flower bouquet in a blue vase is arranged symmetrically along a central axis and framed by a semicircular arch. Despite the stylization of the flowers, roses, carnations, and lilies are easily recognizable. The vase is flanked by flowers in bloom and an eight-petalled flower is set in the spandrels. The flower bouquet and the floral motif of the spandrels are worked out in relief against a perforated background that lies c.8–10mm below the surface.

The latticework is painted brown (see Research).

The window has been restored and is preserved without its original wooden frame (see Technique and Research).

Gypsum plaster; colourless glass; coloured glass (green, blue, two shades of yellow, two shades of flashed red glass); brown paint.

The stucco and glass window is preserved without its original wooden frame and is in good condition: the latticework is intact, and there are no glass losses.

According to the results of an in-depth examination of the stucco and glass windows of the Delort de Gléon Collection carried out in 2008, this, as well as the other windows from the collection, have been restored five times since their acquisition in Cairo (Bailly et al., 2008, pp. 16–25).

The most recent restoration was carried out after this detailed examination, in 2009–2010 (Fellinger et al., 2022). During restoration, defects and losses in the stucco lattice were filled with white stucco plaster, and missing glass was replaced. The pieces of glass replaced in the restoration campaign in 2009 are incised with the date ‘2009’. These new pieces of glass are embedded in a thin layer of white plaster of Paris on the back of the stucco grille; repairs prior to this restoration were done with off-white plaster. There are remains of the original grey embedding layer, which is more grainy and less pure than the two repair plasters.

This stucco and glass window corresponds iconographically and technically to one of the standard types of qamariyya widespread in Egypt during the Ottoman period. Similar windows have survived in several of the collections studied (see for instance IG_4, IG_166, IG_178, IG_255, IG_356). The representation of flowers in a vase is a widespread motif in Islamic arts that can be found across numerous media, such as ceramics, wood panelling, wall paintings, textiles, and stucco and glass windows, over a long period of time, in both sacred and profane contexts. Depending on the quality of the representation, the flower species are not always recognizable. Among the most sophisticated examples are the stucco and glass windows from the apartments of the Crown Prince at the Topkapı Serail (early 17th century CE, date of the windows uncertain) and the Sultan’s Lodge (Hünkâr Kasrı) of the Yeni Cami (1661–1663 CE, date of the windows uncertain), both in Istanbul.

Windows of this type also aroused the interest of Western artists and architects, as is attested by a significant number of book illustrations, sketches, and paintings (see for instance IG_43, IG_118, IG_149, IG_153, IG_437, IG_443, IG_461), as well as by the replicas of such windows installed in Arab-style interiors across Europe (IG_54–IG_59, IG_64, IG_431, IG_484–IG_487).

The Louvre window discussed here stands out for the quality of its composition and the precise representation of the flower species. The colours and material properties of the glass and the latticework – although heavily restored – suggest that the window dates to the late 19th century. This assumption is supported by the results of an analytical study of glass from two stucco and glass windows from the Louvre collection (OA 7466/7 and OA 7466/25) conducted by a team from the Musée du Louvre (Fellinger et al., 2022). In this study, compositions of coloured (green, yellow, red) and colourless glass from this window were determined. The pieces of glass all have a soda-lime composition compatible with glass produced in the 19th century; the presence of elements such as chromium (green glass), arsenic (green and colourless glass), and tin (red glass) confirm production in the 19th century (Fellinger 2022, pp. 122–124).

As to its provenance, the window is one of 39 qamariyyāt supposedly bought in Cairo by the architect Ambroise Baudry (1883–1906) for the French civil mining engineer and art collector Baron Alphonse Delort de Gléon (1843–1899) (Bailly et al., 2008, pp. 16–24). They adorned the Ottoman salon of Delort de Gléon’s hôtel particulier, purchased in 1883, at rue Vézelay 18 in Paris (Volait, 2005, pp. 131–134; Volait, 2009, pp. 99–104, 130–135). This is confirmed by several historical photographs preserved at the Département des Arts de l’Islam (DAI) of the Musée du Louvre, which show the windows inserted in the upper parts of wooden mashrabiyyāt (see Linked Objects and Images). The salon was designed by the baron himself in collaboration with the French architect Jules Bourgoin (1838–1908). The creation of orientalizing interiors, composed of original architectural elements and furnishings as well as replicas of the same, was a widespread practice among Western art collectors at the time (Giese, 2016; Volait, 2016; Giese, 2019).

Based on the photographs mentioned and the presumed date of the windows, one may assume that the windows were created especially for Delort de Gléon’s Arab-style interior and had never been part of a historical building in Cairo. The complete history of these windows however, including possibly multiple reuses and several restorations, is difficult to reconstruct. Based on the unpublished study by Bailly et al. (2008) and our own observations, it seems that most of the windows have been cut from their wooden frames. Extensive repairs to the stucco grille, as well as the partial or complete replacement of the thin plaster layer for embedding the pieces of glass at the backs of the panels, are proof of several restoration campaigns. It is likely that the brown paint on the stucco lattice is not original, but was applied during restoration, with the intention of adapting the windows to new surroundings. It might be the result of a restoration campaign before the Louvre exhibition in 1977, and may have been applied to match the colour of the wooden mashrabiyya in which the windows were displayed.

After the collector’s death, the stucco and glass window passed to his wife Marie Augustine Angélina Delort de Gléon, who bequeathed it as part of Delort de Gléon’s collection of Islamic art to the Musée du Louvre in 1912 (Delort de Gléon, 1914).

Mentioned in:

• Fellinger et al., 2022, pp. 121–124.