Oriental carpets in Renaissance painting

Left image: A "Bellini type" Islamic prayer rug, seen from the top, at the feet of the Virgin Mary, in Gentile Bellini's Madonna and Child Enthroned, late 15th century.
Right image: Prayer rug, Anatolia, late 15th to early 16th century, with "re-entrant" keyhole motif.

Left image: Hans Memling's Still Life with a Jug with Flowers, late 15th century.
Right image: Mugan carpet, Karabakh school,^[1][2] late 14th to early 15th century, Azerbaijan Carpet Museum^[1]

Carpets of Middle-Eastern origin, either from Anatolia, Persia, Armenia, Levant, the Mamluk state of Egypt or Northern Africa, were used as decorative features in Western European paintings from the 14th century onwards. More depictions of Oriental carpets in Renaissance painting survive than actual carpets contemporary with these paintings. Few Middle-Eastern carpets produced before the 17th century remain, though the number of these known has increased in recent decades. Therefore, comparative art-historical research has from its onset in the late 19th century relied on carpets represented in datable European paintings.